The limits of gender rhetoric for nationalism:A case study from southern Africa

THEMBISAWAETJENUniversity of Oregon

Nationalism has been a fruitful, as well as urgent, forum for examininggendered constructions of citizenship, political identity, and civicparticipation: fruitful because articulations of women's political rolesare often crystallized by the exigency of this form of politics; urgentbecause of its observable dangers. Until a decade ago, with few excep-tions, nations and genders had been studied as disparate and, at times,dichotomous areas of inquiry. Scholarship concerned with nationalismstypically analyzed the formation of, and splits between, cultural, lin-guistic, and geographical communities or ``peoples.'' Studies of genderexamined relationships within these groups. Theorists began moreinsistently to explore the linkages in the early 1990s when the strangeconcept of ``genocidal rape''1 drew global attention to the e¡ects ofSerbian ``ethnic cleansing'' on Bosnian women, fueling more generalconcern about post-Cold War nationalist con£ict.2

Nationalism is now seen as the product of collective mobilizationsbased on a variety of imagined or structural boundaries and repro-duced through a complex range of discursive and practical strategies.Feminist theory, concerned with making women visible as politicalsubjects, revealed gender as a central issue in nationalist mobilizations,discourses, and practices.3 Feminist scholars have demonstrated howgender systems supply a set of cohesive, normative ideas and practicesthat assist nation-building ideologically by supplying a naturalizingmetanarrative for the collective imagination. The rhetoric of gender,of womanhood and manhood, of family, of sexuality, and of intergenera-tional continuity is potent and deeply emotional.

Generally speaking, the feminist scholarship that has set out to revealnationalisms' ideological linkages to gender has conceptualized therelationship as symbiotic: the nation upholds patriarchy while patriar-

Theory and Society 30: 121^152, 2001.ß 2001Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

chal gender systems provide a narrative lubricant for smoothing outnationalism's well-known internal contradictions of time, space, andidentity. Anne McClintock,4 for example, observed that gender power-fully facilitates nationalism's tricky dual representation as both anadvocate of tradition and as the vanguard of modern advancement.This temporal dilemma, she argues, is resolved as a natural divisionof gender, with women serving as keepers of tradition and domesticcontinuity and with men as agents of the modern. Invoking nationhoodin the language of family smoothes over other fragmentations, such asclass, particularly during times of war when the codes of citizenshiprequire the break up of families and the sacri¢ce of husbands, sons,and brothers.5

Feminist political theory has also observed the ways in which women'sbodies are imbued with special signi¢cance as representations of com-munity and cultural continuity. The adornment, ritualized movement,labor, and sexual capacities of the female body signify the welfare ofthe larger body politic. Nira Yuval-Davis6 has classi¢ed several typesof collective political formations according to how they are contouredand bounded by the issue of the female body. Racial politics, forexample, which valorize supposed genetic consistencies, typically exer-cise heavy controls over the sexuality of women who are viewed asvessels of the ``race'' (as Balibar observes, ``racism always presupposessexism.''7) Women's sexuality was at issue in the creation of empire,where colonial o¤cials citing the need to protect European women fromnative men justi¢ed all manners of repression.8 As representatives ofthe political collective, the bodies of individual women are subjected tonationalist concern, control, and, by enemies, to violation.

Feminist scholarship on nationalism generally focuses on the politicalincorporation of women though normative discourses of gender andsexuality and emphasizes the functionality of patriarchy for nationalism.Cynthia Enloe, for example, asserts that ` (n)ationalism typically hassprung from masculinized memory, masculinized humiliation, andmasculinized hopes.''9 Joane Nagel similarly observes that ` masculinityand nationalism articulate well with one another.''10 Research hastended to examine nationalist constructions of masculinity that rein-force existing modes of gender power.

On the one hand, there is no denying that modern constructions ofmasculinity are bound up with the history of the nation-state and post-colonial independence, or that a con£ation of civic and masculine

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virtues is at the heart of why soldiering, for example, is a male occupa-tion. Accounting for men as gendered agents in nationalist processes isof great importance, most obviously in the light of horrors such asethnic cleansing when the work of masculinity in producing politicalmilitancy becomes highly visible. Nationalism's concern with men andmanhood has always been implicit in political theory, even if notcritically investigated.When Benedict Anderson recounted the reveal-ing phenomenon of the Unknown Soldier, that cenotaph ` void . . . ofidenti¢able remains . . . but nonetheless saturated with ghostly nationalimaginings''11 he did not ponder the particular impact such monu-ments derive from an immortal masculinity that ¢gures into theimagery of combat and sacri¢ce on behalf of the nation. Nor doesAnthony Smith interrogate his own richly suggestive observation that` nationalism is a vision of the future which (claims to) restore man tohis `essences,' his basic pattern of living and being, which was once hisundisputed birthright.''12

On the other hand, there is good reason to approach the seeminglystraightforward relationship between nationalism and masculine powerwith suspicion. In some instances, masculinity and nationalism mayindeed articulate well with one another other. In other instances, it maybe much more crucial to recognize where they clash. Over-generalizedassertions of a symbiotic relationship between masculinity and nation-alism can be problematic for research. Certain research methods suchas content analysis, which help to identify gendered themes and symbolsin nationalist narratives, frequently merely serve to con¢rm a mascu-linist blueprint at the heart of the national interest. Although thecontingency of male power is increasingly acknowledged by gendertheory, studies continue to approach nations and gender systems asmutually supportive constructions.13 At the crudest level, this risksendorsing a central myth of nationalism: that it ful¢lls its seductivepromise of existing as a ``brotherhood,'' a ` deep, horizontal comrade-ship,''14 between men. Masculinity may have for gender theory thesame metaphoric value it has for nationalism ^ an overstated cohesionof interests, forces, and ideologies.

The nature of male power in nationalism cannot be revealed simplythrough attention to women's social placement and subjugation. Inthis case, we should be critical of Heidi Hartmann's much-quotedconception of patriarchy as a system in which men, despite di¡erences,are ` united in their shared dominance over women.''15 To recognizethat de¢nitions like this hide as much as they reveal is not to deny the

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reality of masculine hegemony but rather to assert the need to accountbetter for relations of power and con£ict between men.

There are at least four reasons for adopting this approach. Firstly,although it is certain that maleness o¡ers privileges over broad andvaried social terrain, men are located in relations of class, age, andracialized hierarchies with di¡erential access to authoritative and allo-cative power. New studies of men and masculinity continue to raisethis issue, demonstrating its importance for social analysis.16 As per-taining speci¢cally to nationalisms, which typically claim to be agentsof fraternal leveling, di¡erences between men are of fundamental sig-ni¢cance. Precisely because social fragmentations ^ particularly class^ are intrinsic to the history of nationalism,17 theorizing men andnation requires a conception of gender power that accounts for thosefragmentations and the historically speci¢c conditions out of whichthey arise.

A second point, less adequately theorized, is that nationalisms areoften forced to incorporate more than one vision of patriarchal socialorganization into its narrative of the collective whole. As has been theexperience in various regions of post-colonial Africa, di¡erent formsof patriarchy may exist as mutually reinforcing systems but yet rest onopposing principles of political authority and operate with contraryexpectations about citizenship, including ideals about gender conductand consciousness. These di¡erences are often expressed geographically,as a rural/urban divide. Con£ict between patriarchies may underminenationalist assertions of cultural seamlessness and unity.

Di¡erences between men and between patriarchies are important toexplore for a third reason: they have an impact on the experiences andpolitical identities of women in nationalism. Over-generalized indict-ments of patriarchal nationalism cannot account for the sometimes-competing ideas about women's roles in national life. Understandingwhat is at stake behind divergent ideologies can often shed light onwomen's own political choices in the dilemmas they face. This may seemespecially at issue in post-colonial societies, in which rural/urban culturaldistinctions are pronounced. Yet competing patriarchal values shapewomen's citizenship debates also in the United States and elsewhere.18

Finally, in obscuring the contradictions and fragmentations in patriar-chal power, in ideologies of masculinity, or the social grouping ` men,''we not only limit our analysis of nationalist mobilization, but we also

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risk losing sight of why some nationalisms fail. Indeed, the signi¢cance ofthe di¡erences between men and between forms of patriarchy becomestransparent in cases of nationalism that fail. ` Failed'' nationalisms ^nationalisms that either do not succeed in mobilizing constituencies orelse enjoy only a measured success in relation to their stated aims ^often do not receive analytical attention. In cases where they generatesensational newspaper headlines, nationalisms are not usually examinedin terms of failure.

The implications of this simple fact are weighty for the study ofnationalisms in general, and the role of gender in nationalism in par-ticular. The organizational and rhetorical labor involved in mobilizingmen ^ labor that underlines the contingency of nationalist success ^may be especially visible in cases in which it is most fraught. Suchinstances divulge the limits of gender rhetoric even as it supplies thenation with a vision of itself as a family, o¡ers men the status of heroes,and proclaims women as ` mothers of the nation.'' Cases of failednationalism demonstrate that engendering the nation is a problematicenterprise with uncertain outcomes.19 If we overlook the complex con-ditions ^ both local and global ^ which simultaneously structure andfragment speci¢c con¢gurations of male political power we risk missingthe crucial fact that nationalist recruitment of men as gendered politicalsubjects is de¢ned by the possibility of failure.

My intention in this article is primarily to show how contested visionsof masculinity, citizenship, patriarchy, and political authority a¡ecthow nationalism unfolds and how it represents itself in discourse.I present a case of what I qualify as a ` failed nationalism,'' a case inwhich a pronounced gender rhetoric proved to be of signi¢cant, butultimately limited, power in the project of securing the loyalty ofcrucial constituencies across class, age, geographical, and other socialfault-lines. Relatedly, I wish to demonstrate that historically and empiri-cally informed conceptions of patriarchy reveal the complex problem ofpower at the heart of the masculinist ` voice'' of nationalism and thatthese complexities greatly a¡ect women's and men's di¡erent experiencesof citizenship.

A single case study is su¤cient to explore what may be revealed whenwe approach gender not as a system that is functional for nationalismbut as a fragmented and con£ictual ¢eld against which nationalismsstrive to consolidate their vision of seamlessness. The South Africancase of Chief Buthelezi's Zulu organization, Inkatha, o¡ers a particu-

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larly fascinating exploration of what is at stake for theories of nation-alism when we focus on the complex aspects of gender systems. Beforeproviding a more detailed background and discussion of Inkatha, Iwish brie£y to comment on its relevance to the issue I have raised.

Inkatha, Zulu masculinity, and political failure

The case of Inkatha highlights both the power and limitations ofmasculinity as a unifying ideology. Inkatha's primary cultural broker,Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, employed a sophisticated and well-craftedmasculinist discourse that referenced ` traditional'' gender systems andidentities to bolster its credibility as a nationalist politics based ondeep-seated cultural traditions. With claims to a renowned martialhistory manifested in the legendary deeds of Zulu heroes, kings, andchiefs and in the incorporation of symbols and artifacts (such as tradi-tional weapons), Inkatha's political appeal emphasized masculinistcultural practices such that the ` idea of `manhood' permeates thevision of the essence of Zuluness.''20

Zulu masculinity has an undeniably international currency: thoseunfamiliar with South Africa's regional history will appreciate none-theless the rich symbolic material available for collective identityconstruction. Indeed, the symbolic potency of Zulu masculinity hasclearly appealed to people who cannot easily claim either to be, or tospeak Zulu. In 1997, members of a youth gang in Brazzaville, Congoknown as the ` Zulus'' formed armed militias and fought against fac-tions of ``Ninjas'' and ` Cobras.'' On the World Wide Web one mayencounter the ``Universal Zulu Nation,'' an organization that claimsmembership in locations as diverse as NewYork City and Oslo, Norway.In South Africa itself, the commodi¢cation of ` authentic'' culturalexprience in the form of tourist attractions, from ` cultural villages''like Shakaland to plans for extravagant casinos themed on a ` Zuluencounter,''21 play to representations of Zulu manhood saturated incolonial memory. For decades, the ¢lm industry has played a pivotalrole in disseminating the romance of warriors clasping shields andweaponry, of chiefs attired beautifully in leopard skin to denote theirstatus. Such images were generously exported during the nineteenthcentury. Novelists, most notably Rider Haggard, contributed to theromantic view of the ` Zulu'' as the quintessential savage African mas-culinity, and of Zululand as a place of risk and danger where Europeanmanhood could be steeled. In a classi¢catory sketch of the ``peoples'' of

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South Africa, writer Sara Gertrude Millin wrote of ``the Zulu'' witha notable emphasis on masculinity and the Zulu male body. Shecomments, for example, that

if one chooses to be aesthetic rather than practical, one has to admit that theZulus (and that, too, may be the result of Tchaka's ruthlessness) are the ¢nestof all the black races ^ indeed from the point of view of their bodies,probably the most perfect race in the world. They are about six feet in heightand their lines are those immortalized by master sculptors. It is common-place to describe them as bronze statues, but naked and anointed, that iswhat they actually do look like. . . . The Zulus, too ^ again their history standsbehind them ^ have a more aristocratic and self-con¢dent bearing than mostof the other tribes. Today they tend babies and wipe £oors and come and go asthey are told to come and go, but now and then the old spirit leaps out . . . .22

Following these high praises, Millin concludes `As a matter of actualfact, the ka¤r, when he is not in his barbarous state, looks best in thewhite drill suit which is his customary wear in household service.''23

Millin attributes the demise of tribal masculinity, in which the ` ka¤r''becomes a shadow image of his former barbaric glory, to the colonialintrusion on a purer tribal identity. Nostalgia for the ``raw'' Zulu, suchas is found in Millin and Haggard, re£ected white ambivalence overthe rapid urbanization of Africans as wage laborers. Narratives ofpolitical threat expressing fears of this ``black tide'' are linked to lamentsfor the loss of tribal discipline and native tradition.24

Inkatha's leadership also expressed the subjugation of Zulu-speakingpeople as crystallized most poignantly in the transformation of theZulu man from warrior to houseboy. In Buthelezi's speeches, the lossesof cultural pride, dignity, and identity are linked to loss of the privilegeand power Zulu men once claimed unequivocally. Zulu men are` brothers born of warrior stock''25 who have become ``drawers of waterand hewers of wood.''26 Yet, their privilege may be reclaimed throughassociation with Inkatha, a politics that declares that ` we here aredescendants of brave warriors, and the blood of warriors £ows in ourveins . . . .''27 Buthelezi's speeches are peppered with assertions aboutmanhood and political agency. For example:

It is important for us to walk tall ^ to be men amongst men.. . . When ourmanhood is subverted, when our dignity is sullied, when our courtesy isdespised, mistakes are made which are costly to everything we hold dear.Wehave shown our bravery in the past.We can show it again.28

For Zulu men, past glories can produce modern successes in thepolitical arena:

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Our Zuluness is an instrument for liberation and, whether the world likes itor not, our Zuluness has been employed and will continue to be employed inthe black struggle of liberation because that is what our long line of illustriouskings and our marching columns of martyrs and heroes long since departeddemand that we do.. . . My message to you is to spurn anything and everythingwhich usurps the power of the Zulu input into the black struggle for liberation.We must play our role and we must play our role standing shoulder to shoulder¢nding the comradeship and brotherhood which is ours.29

Photojournalistic images of Inkatha depict its male supporters ` beingZulu,'' their gestures and adornments suggesting an essential culturalidentity, an ancient spirit newly awakened.30 To all appearances, then,Inkatha represents a nationalism fashioned and consolidated throughmasculinist memories, humiliations, and hopes. Its evident appeal tolarge numbers of men who carry traditional weapons and parade theirloyalty to the Zulu nation would appear to con¢rm, as common sense,both that masculinity confers national cohesion and that nationalismconfers solidarity among men.

This interpretation is misleading. Despite impressive displays of em-bodied support, Inkatha's expressly masculinist appeal attests ratherto the di¤culties, even impossibilities, of Zulu, masculine solidarity ina context where social conditions and interests place men in di¡erentialor competing relationships. Inkatha's masculinist discourses were em-ployed precisely to smooth over the irreparable losses of certain kindsof male privilege, to suture ideologically irreconcilable class divides,and to secure loyalty of potential supporters against their defection tocompeting political movements (in which case they would become adirect challenge and threat).

It is mistaken to interpret the atavistic longings that inform Inkatha'sdiscourses as evidence of a unitary gender position or voice. Nor canwe view the articulation of such longings as actually giving e¡ect to theunity that is being sought. Rather, as I argue later in the article, thesevirulently masculinist nationalisms give expression to an awareness ofthe burdened and profoundly ambiguous subject position of Zulu-speaking men in the context of Inkatha's nation-building.

Political speeches by Buthelezi and Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithinireveal the conditions and constraints shaping Inkatha's recruitmente¡orts. Despite hyperbolical claims and a rich history of ethnic distinc-tiveness, Inkatha ultimately failed to establish ethnic, male solidarity inways that could guarantee the successful ful¢llment of its stated aims.

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Inkatha's failure to unify a fragmented ethnic nation on grounds ofcommon identity and heritage is evidenced most dramatically by thecivil strife that claimed more than 15,00031 lives in an uno¤cial warthat was largely, though not exclusively, fought out between Zulu-speaking men. Conceptions of masculinity rooted in an appeal toZuluness did not successfully close the social faultlines within the ethnicZulu population. Class, age, geographical positioning, and, of course,political outlook, were salient features in partitioning Zulu-speakingmen. Inkatha's failures reveal as much about the power of genderrhetoric for nationalism as do its obvious successes.

I treat Inkatha as a ``failed nationalism'' on several speci¢c counts.First, it failed speci¢cally as a politics of nationalism; that is, it failedto unify ` the Zulu'' as an ethnic nation in the broader context of SouthAfrican politics. The level of resistance to Inkatha's regional hegemony,manifested in a murderous ¢fteen-year con£ict, is perhaps the best proofof Inkatha's failure in its project of ethnic nation-building. Politicaldivisions among ethnic Zulus were con¢rmed in the provincial 1994elections following Inkatha's reinvention of itself as a political party.In a province where ninety percent of the African population is Zulu-speaking, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) secured 55 percent of theZulu vote while the African National Congress (ANC) claimed a full40 percent.32 Two years later, local elections in KwaZulu-Natal in 1996indicated that Inkatha's support remained ¢rmly rural. Its 63,804 votesrepresented a rural landslide, but it su¡ered monumental defeat inthe urban areas, giving the African National Congress (ANC) a clearvictory with 217,122 votes. Generally speaking, Inkatha's appeal toethnic tradition failed to mobilize established workers and urban resi-dents whose livelihoods were cast in relation to a very di¡erent set ofinstitutions and political concerns and who tended to be loyal to ANCand to organized trade unions.

A second basis for discussing Inkatha's failure is that it did not achieveits stated political aims. Its long-term bid for statehood, within whatit hoped would be a federalist post-apartheid South Africa, fell apartwith the complex turn of events in the late 1980s. Its brief pursuit tobecome an independent Zulu kingdom just prior to the 1994 electionssimilarly collapsed. During South Africa's transition to democracy,Inkatha had to adjust itself to the role of opposition party. Though itsconstituency did not greatly alter, it attempted to broaden its publicappeal through a conservative platform of family values and regionaleconomic development.

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Finally, to a signi¢cant degree, Inkatha failed as a politics of masculinity.It is important to qualify this assertion since, as argued below, Inkatha'sundeniable success in constructing regional in£uence was largely ane¡ect of the militant response of its male support. Yet, measuredagainst its expressed bid for the loyalty of adult working-class men, itsappeal to an ethnicity-based political identity did not succeed in e¡ec-tively challenging strong ANC support among organized workers forwhom class, race, and a universal ethic of non-racialism or ` SouthAfrican-ness'' o¡ered a more immediate premise for political action.Inkatha's own membership ¢gures are interesting to consider for whatthey show about Inkatha's most e¡ective appeals. Inkatha membershipfell under three categories: a Women's Brigade, accounting for 34percent of Inkatha's membership; a Youth Brigade, which accountedfor 38 percent; and a General Membership, which constituted theremaining 28 percent. The latter two categories are not broken downby gender. However, even if we assume that adult working men makeup the entire classi¢cation of ` General Membership,'' the targets ofInkatha's masculinist appeal still constitute its smallest category ofmembership.

Despite these failures, Inkatha gained a political in£uence that continuesto shape South African politics, most especially in the province ofKwaZulu-Natal. There is no doubt that Inkatha's successful enlistmentofmenwas the crucial factor in achieving regional power. More specif-ically, its power resided in the manner of masculine agency that wasmobilized against ANC opposition, namely the uses of violence, threatsof violence, and intimidation.

The violent con£ict between Inkatha and the ANC was far and awaythe most signi¢cant factor that shaped the region's transition in thepost-apartheid era and ensured Buthelezi himself a powerful positionin the new government.33 The threat of continuing violence demandedthat the ANC capitulate to Inkatha in order to ensure a measure ofpeace in the region. And while, in the most critical years before the endof apartheid, this threat of continued violence had been greatly enhancedby military support of Inkatha by the apartheid state, the fact of this` third force'' should not lead us to deny Inkatha's fervent grassrootsappeal.

Inkatha is an ideal case for examining how gender systems have animpact on ethnic mobilization in a way that lays bare both the impor-tance and the challenges of mobilizing men in a contested political ¢eld.

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Inkatha: Zulu nationalism in historical context

Inkatha (pronounced in-KA-ta) was established in 1975 by MangosuthuButhelezi, a hereditary chief important also as the appointed ChiefMinister of the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly (KLA), the tribal govern-mental body created by the apartheid state to oversee the country'seight million Zulu-speakers. Although founded as a cultural organiza-tion, Inkatha was much more a political body for ¢ghting against theconstricting policies of apartheid and, importantly, for advancing theinterests of the Zulu tribal elite through ethnic populism. With onemillion members at its highpoint, Buthelezi could well claim to leadthe largest black organization in South Africa.

Inkatha had a highly contentious political reputation during the twodecades leading up to South Africa's political transition for severalreasons, not the least among them Buthelezi's own breathtaking questfor personal power. While originally considered a local-based ally ofthe ANC, which had been working in exile since 1960, Inkatha'sembroilment in the structures of apartheid through its attachment tothe KLA quickly discredited Buthelezi's claim to be working againstapartheid ` from within the system.'' The state, indeed, provided Inkathawith the formal advantages of its own airport, police force, educationalinstitutions, media, leadership, and recruitment machinery. Moreover,in contrast to the socialist rhetoric of the ANC and of the Congressof South African Trade Unions (COSATU), Buthelezi promoted acapitalist agenda for regional development in a federalist South Africa.Buthelezi vehemently opposed radical strategies such as worker strikes,school boycotts and the international disinvestment campaign. In theeyes of local white capitalists, he became popular as the representativeof a favored ` alternative'' political solution. The administrations ofThatcher, Reagan, and Kohl helped establish his reputation interna-tionally as a voice of reason amidst revolutionary chaos.The FinancialTimes voted him ` Man of theYear'' in 1985.

Hostilities between Inkatha and the ANC erupted in London in 1979and made Buthelezi increasingly defensive about Inkatha's importanceto black liberation and the ` Zulu role'' within it.Violent confrontationsbetween Inkatha and the ANC began in 1983 and escalated throughthe decade.34 The con£ict drew a bewildered global gaze as ``black onblack'' violence killed, destroyed, displaced, and physically and psycho-logically maimed thousands of people who held in common the hope ofending white domination and the horrors of apartheid. As the dawning

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of the 1990s saw the release of Nelson Mandela and the most astound-ing, unexpectedly peaceful transfer of power in history, more than 15,000violent deaths in KwaZulu-Natal constituted the tragic exception tothe celebrated ` bloodless'' revolution.

Zulu politics and the transformation of rural patriarchy

Inkatha refers to a circular mat of woven grass or cloth that is placedon the head of a woman to assist her in bearing burdens.35 It forms oneof several symbols incorporated into the scepter of the Zulu royalhouse, representing the integration and unity of the Zulu nation. Asthe name of a political movement, it suggested an age-old collectiveunity represented by the Zulu King. Zulu identity politics, however,has a complex history and Buthelezi's Inkatha is most sagaciouslylocated within a tangle of social processes that shaped social relationsand the geographies of power in the region for one-hundred and eightyyears.36

Until the early nineteenth century, this region was made up of clustersof neighboring homesteads that were linked by kinship and or client-ship within a chiefdom.37 Like most precapitalist societies in southernAfrica, Nguni-speaking societies were based on an economy of mixedagriculture and pastoralism. Cooperation among homesteads in pro-duction created the surplus necessary to maintain a chie£y class whoserole it was to oversee planting, harvesting, trade, community a¡airs,dispute settlements, and the allocation of land as well as bridewealth tomales in their domain. Viewed as ``fathers'' of the people through thelegitimizing ideology of patrilineal kinship, chiefs controlled processesof production and reproduction within a community.

The vital center of these processes was the individual rural homestead.Homestead units were headed by adult married men whose authorityand economic status resided in their control over women's and youngermen's productive and reproductive labor. A single homestead wascomposed of a cattle kraal surrounded by households (huts) and gardensbelonging to the wives (and their respective children), mother, and otherdependent family members of the household head. Men enhancedtheir wealth and power by increasing their control over female laborthrough marriage, acquired through the institution of lobolo (bride-wealth), usually an exchange of cattle to which they had exclusive rightsof ownership and accumulation.38

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In the early decades of the nineteenth century, one clan (Zulu) beganto monopolize control over large areas through military conquest.Between 1818 and 1828, the remarkable King Shaka organized amabutho(regiments of young men) from his own and conquered chiefdoms intoa powerful army and formed a centralized state that exercised highlydisciplined control over the region. The institution of amabutho servedthe dual purpose of exacting economic and military labor (his soldierscultivated his ¢elds and herded his cattle) and controlling fertility.After a term of service, men were allocated cattle necessary to paylobolo and sent home to marry and form homesteads of their own.39

The Zulu state's remarkable ability to draw its subjects into serviceenabled it to resist the pressures of colonial encroachment and theeconomic pressures of merchant capital for many decades.40

During this period, Zulu political identity was shaped by gender andgenerational con£icts.41 Morrell, Wright, and Meintjes argue thatpatriarchy, which gave power and prestige to kings, chiefs, and home-stead heads ` synchronized powerfully with a martial masculinity thatwas at the heart of Zulu cultural expression. Being a man, particularlyin this period of turmoil and bloodshed, meant being able to ¢ght anddefend, to endure hardship, to be loyal and obedient to one's seniors.''

The amabutho, so long as they survived, were the major institutional mecha-nism for generating this form of masculinity. And even when the amabuthoceased to take in young men and regiment them as before, the practiceswhich formed part of the training received there ^ for example, stick ¢ghtingand deference to authority ^ were entrenched at the level of the homestead.. . .The codes which underpinned these values continued to exist . . . £exibleenough to deal with many of the cultural challenges which colonialism andmodernity brought. But the political economy of the region was being trans-formed ^ modes of production were changing, land was being alienated, andpower relations recon¢gured. Rival interpretations of life .. . o¡ered new waysof . . . representation and labeling and necessarily altered the way in whichpeople understood themselves and their lives.42

In 1879, the Zulu Kingdom was destroyed through war by the Britisharmy. Yet in important ways Shaka's tributary state, predicated on theadaptation of preexisting gender divisions of labor, laid the basis for itsappropriation, over decades, by the British colonial state. Under colo-nialism, homesteads still rendered up their surplus product throughsubordinate chiefs and homestead heads but now to colonial authoritiesinstead of Shaka's tribute collectors. An important consensus amongAfricanist historians is that colonial rule did not (and could not) simplyimpose a European model of political economy upon subjugated

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peasants but rather learned to adopt indigenous social institutionstoward its own ends. The patterns of proletarianization, for example,re£ected preexisting divisions of labor (including the institution ofamabutho) that were enhanced and incorporated into a system ofmigrant labor.43 As Mahmood Mamdani observes,44 the success ofindirect rule in Natal, which incorporated chie£y power and customarylaw into a larger system of state control, was emulated by other colonialprojects on the continent. Africans were ruled under a separate ``tribal''law that e¡ectively rigidi¢ed African social organization and notionsof ethnic belonging. Under the 1891 Natal Codes, chiefs no longerrepresented their people under obligations of reciprocity but were re-de¢ned as the holders of administrative o¤ces accorded or maintainedby the state.45 Resistance by Africans to colonial in¢ltration wasvanquished not only through direct force (such as the Anglo-ZuluWarof 1879 and the brutal counter-insurgency against the Bambatha rebel-lion in 1906) but also through institutional appropriation, taxation,codi¢cation of customary law, and by the assaults on rural subsistenceeconomy by bad weather and cattle diseases.46

The gender system that in£uenced Inkatha's politics was forged inthe transformation of rural patriarchy in KwaZulu-Natal during thelate nineteenth century. The transformation of agrarian patriarchy topatriarchal capitalism meant that control over production and repro-duction gradually passed out of the hands of African men and into thehands of the state.47 Importantly, this loss of control impacted Africanmen di¡erently according to social status, age, and even geographicalregion. The social distance between chiefs and non-elite men wasgreatly enhanced. The commercial discovery of diamonds (1867), andlater of gold (1886), formed the basis of South African capitalization.The power of chiefs increased as they became recruiters of young malewaged labor and received remuneration for the services of workershailing from their territories.

Christian missionaries also had an important impact on the structuresboth of gender and class among Africans in Natal. Doctrinal assaulton the institutions of polygeny and bridewealth, along with the intro-duction of western education, fashion, and family values, preparedAfrican women for new kinds of subordination as wives and hireddomestic workers.48 Converted African men found a new avenue forsocial mobility in the marketplace, and new forms of masculinityassociated with ideals of advancement. The emergence of communitiesof Christian amakholwa (believers) who received western-style education

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and preferential access to agricultural markets created a native middleclass that embraced the European discourse of progress. Their economicand social successes shifted power and patriarchal values. However,their reach toward Victorian evangelism and upward mobility wascircumscribed by vicious racial discrimination, cultivating a painfulawareness of their second class status. A critical blow came in 1913with the passing of the Native Land Act, a progenitor of apartheid'shomeland policies, which relegated ` natives'' to less fertile reserves andprevented them from purchasing lands outside. Excluded from fullcitizenship in a society that had so signi¢cantly in£uenced theirformation as a social group, kholwa businessmen and communityleaders began to turn to their cultural ` roots'' for advancement andbelonging.

In the early 1920s they formed the ¢rst Zulu nationalist organization,Inkatha KaZulu. The organization was designed to cultivate a strong` tribal'' structure and collective identity that could facilitate their goalsas an economic class as well as resist white domination.49 They con-vinced ¢gurehead-monarch King Solomon ka Dinizulu to be theirpatron. Establishing an alliance between themselves and the Zulu kingthey attempted to advance their interests as a native bourgeois classthrough ethnic-based statehood. Although the life of this ¢rst Inkathawas short, e¡orts to cultivate a Zulu political identity and to mobilizethe larger population on that basis continue. For example, NobelPeace Prize winner Chief Albert Luthuli founded the Zulu CulturalSociety in 1937.50

Ethnicity and the bantustans

The victory of the Afrikaner National Party in 1948 heralded a newincarnation of indirect rule as a strategy of political control (andeconomic development). Through the statecraft of apartheid, ethnicdiversity in South Africa was ¢xed into classi¢cations that determinedmost every aspect of life for its residents. Bantustans, or ethnic ``home-lands'' assigned strict territoriality to tribal ` nations'' and e¡ectivelydenationalized and dislocated thousands from soil claimed by the state.The Bantu Authorities Act of 1950 and Promotion of Bantu self-governing Act of 1959 were the keystones of the policy of ``separatedevelopment'' that bolstered the power of customary authorities andtribal counsels over their subjects. Relocating and reorganizing theAfrican population into homelands was intended to remove South

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Africa's political obligation to Africans while facilitating their incor-poration into South Africa's economy as temporarymigrant workers.

The ZuluTerritorial Authority was established in 1970 in KwaZulu andButhelezi was instated as Chief Minister. In all manners, Buthelezi hadpresented himself as the custodian of Zulu culture and history. AsChief Minister, he established a Bureau of Language and Culture to` unite the Zulu people through knowledge and appreciation of theirpast, and to use this to foster pride of nationhood in the future.''51

Between 1951 and 1968, Buthelezi worked to advance himself withinZulu politics as a legitimate player.52 It was during these years that hedeveloped the discourse that would be formalized in the assertion ofInkatha's legitimacy as the organization representing Zulu interests inthe politics of liberation. In 1954, he organized the ¢rst ` Shaka Day''celebration, a festival dedicated to recalling the memory of the earlynineteenth-century founder of the Zulu Kingdom. In the late 1970s,this festival became an annual event and an important occasion forInkatha's campaigning during the 1980s.

In creating a renewed Inkatha, recalling its earlier incarnation,Buthelezi's hopes for securing social advantage in South African politicsthough an appeal to ethnic particularism re£ects ` dialectic of class andtribe'' described by John Saul. Namely, it represents an attempt to` stitch together and to rally constituencies in order more successfullyto engage in .. . competition (for political power and related economicadvantages)'' through the politicization of cultural identity.53 Yet, in thecontext of anti-colonial mobilizations, it necessarily sat on an awkwardfence between black and Zulu politics ^ a position that became anongoing crisis for political mobilization.

Patriarchies, masculinities, and Inkatha's discourse ofnation-building

The case of Inkatha provides a compelling opportunity to reexaminethe linkages between social constructions of gender and nation, andspeci¢cally to evaluate the instrumentality of gender rhetoric for nation-building. The o¤cial discourses of Inkatha's leadership54 reveal thatgender and patriarchy (in the context of urban-rural relations) wereproblematic for Inkatha. Perhaps more than any other issue, con£ictand di¡erence between men (and between notions of patriarchy) shapedthe outcome of Inkatha's nation-building. The masculinist tone of its

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discourse should not be read through a bipolar conception of genderpower (that is, men over women) because this risks simply con¢rmingthat ` masculinity and nationalism articulate well with one another.''Such an interpretation ignores the signi¢cant failures of Inkatha toachieve regional hegemony and begs the question of why the InkathaWomen's Brigade claimed such high membership ¢gures.

Inkatha's gender rhetoric expresses the unsettled nature of gender powerin a revolutionary context where the status of patriarchal authority andsubjectivity was rapidly changing. This is particularly evident in twoarenas: the institution of chieftainship and the migrant labor system.The next sections of this article examine how Inkatha addressed mount-ing tensions in these important social domains.

Contested patriarchies: Con£icts of authority and citizenship inInkatha's anti-apartheid platform

Inkatha's main support came from the countryside, the dominion ofchiefs. Despite its ethnicity-based platform, Inkatha's relation to chiefswas complex and Buthelezi's style of traditionalism did not appeal toall chiefs. As agents of the apartheid state, some chiefs worried thatInkatha would undermine the rebirth of the Zulu nation promoted byPretoria's designs of separate development.55 Chie£y support was con-tingent upon the guarantee that their authority would remain intact,an assurrance that Buthelezi continually reasserted. The issue wasindeed sensitive. A chief himself, Buthelezi faced challenges to his ownhereditary claims56 and to the propriety of hereditary patriarchal author-ity in a liberated, democratic South Africa.

In the 1980s, Inkatha had to contend with a growing paradox. Underapartheid, the territorial organization of African ethnic groups into` homelands'' gave new salience to ethnic identity. Firstly, it increasedthe stakes of culture-based statehood by o¡ering power and materialadvantage to elites who accepted its terms. Secondly, it supplied thepolitical infrastructure through which tribal elites and black entrepre-neurs could form class-interested alliances. Finally, as a means ofcurbing African urbanization and black resistance it provided materialshape and ideological credibility to the concept of ethnic ``nations,''which had been in many ways unsettled through urbanization andracialized politics. Thus, because of apartheid, ethnicity was a¡ordedgreater visibility and bureaucratic support for mobilizing constituencies.

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However, this was a liability as well as an asset for an ethnicity-basedpolitics of liberation (as Inkatha claimed to be). The fact that ethnicpurity was crucial to the ontological doctrines of apartheid madeethnic nationalism, in principle, highly suspect. Implementation of theapartheid regime's homelands strategy, which involved the displacementand denationalization of black populations, undermined assertions ofessential cultural unity. Chiefs and other ` bantustan'' elites, shaped byPretoria into bureaucratic councils and frequently corrupt legislativegovernments, were far from credible in the eyes of many black SouthAfricans, particularly urban youth. Resentment against bantustan` collaborators'' increased during the 1980s as anti-apartheid politicsgained ground.

Inkatha, as an ethnic nationalist movement, was necessarily at thevortex of this fury. Created within, and welded to, the governmentstructures of the KwaZulu bantustan, it emerged alongside trade unionpolitics, youth militancy, township-based civics, and feminist voicesthat were forging alliances around an ethos of democracy and universalcitizenship. To urban civil activists, ` traditional'' tribal administrativestructures represented a reactionary, anti-democratic element beholdento the architects of divide-and-rule. Inkatha was regarded as a copy ofAfrikanerdom and as reactionary, despotic, and insu¡erably patriarchal.

With a liberal democratic ethic leading the civil struggle for liberation,Inkatha was obligated to speak to diverse political principles and seeklegitimacy in circles that operated upon di¡erent notions of politicalauthority and citizenship. On the one hand, to be awarded credibilityas a modern representative for ` black'' (and not simply Zulu) liberation,it had to speak the language of democracy and civic principles; abstractequality, rights, and elected o¤ce. Yet it also was continually requiredto assure chiefs of their authority, which rested on hereditary patri-archy, tribal custom, control of land, and a subject population.57 Whileit is possible to overstate the opposition between customary and civicforms of social control ^ particularly as they had been linked througha century of white indirect rule ^ the delicacy of Inkatha's task inresolving this con£ict is highlighted by speci¢c issues. A major tensionbetween customary and civic forms of patriarchy was the issue ofwomen's political status and rights. This issue surfaced, for example,in the KwaZulu Legislative Assemply (KLA) in the early 1980s over aproposed repeal of Section 27 of the colonial Natal Codes, whichlegally relegated women to the status of minors. This debate overwomen's rights also o¡ers a view of what is at stake for women in these

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struggles, underlining my earlier assertion that acknowledging multiplepatriarchal interests in nationalism is necessary to assess implicationsfor women's citizenship.

Under the Natal Codes, women could not easily achieve economicindependence: they were not able to inherit property and their mobilitywas subject to the discretion of husbands or (in their absence) chiefs.Women's status under ` tribal,'' customary law was fundamentally atodds with the feminist component of liberation discourse that was gain-ing new ground. The pressure to demonstrate Inkatha's democraticrelevance on the ` woman question'' was evidenced in the May 1980KLA hearings when one o¤cial suggested that women should be giventhe right to vote in the election of community councils. He appealed tothe assembly, declaring

Mr. Speaker, as modern people who think for themselves, I wonder where wewould be in this struggle for liberation without our women.We realized thatwe would get nowhere without them. As modern people we ¢nd that even ourgovernment encourages us to work hand in hand with our women and wetake note of this.58

Buthelezi's response reveals the complexity of what is at stake in regardto this issue. He proposed that, despite Inkatha's principles of equalitybased on sex, they should ``proceed cautiously'' because ``it is a matterwhich has such a serious impact on Zulu society. . . . If you look at it, inthe ¢rst place, it goes right to the marrow of the authority of the chief.''59

Preserving the authority of the chief clearly requires a speci¢c kind ofpolitical subjectivity for women, one that is at odds with Inkatha'sneed to showcase its modern principles. The problem this representedfor Inkatha was further revealed, a year later, when the issue of the legalstatus of women was again opened. This time the debate culminatedwith the repeal of Section 27, simultaneously heralding the new legalequality of women in KwaZulu and the purging of an oppressivecolonial legislation. Yet, the basic problem of chie£y authority clearlyretained its awkward tension, as the ensuing strained assurances tochiefs would seem to indicate. In this discussion, a Dr. Mkhize proposedthat, in relation to women's status, an ambiguity persists that canretain chie£y authority against the abstraction of gender equality:

I wish to point out that even though there may be two or three clauses whichmight be misinterpreted by some male members of our society as purportingto give authority to female over male in the same kraal, I say that I do notenvisage any complications or di¤culties because we are Zulus, we are blacks,

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and our custom will always dictate.The bill is intended .. . to raise the status ofblack women and it does not exonerate or exempt her from the operation ofZulu customs . . . .60

Mr. R. Mbonqu adds:

I want to say how grateful I am because this bill will not in any way bringabout the situation where the women folk will override the men.. . . I wish toadvise our womenfolk never to forget the Zulu tradition and culture that theman must always be respected by the women ... I know that it is an acceptedfact that to rule the Zulu nation we are in fact dependent on our womenfolk.I am saying this, Mr. Speaker, and I am pleading with our womenfolk not totake things too fast once they realize that they now have these rights.61

In regard to the repeal of Section 27, Buthelezi could thus declare that` if that kind of legislation is expected to be initiated by feminists, Iwould like to say we are feminists in our own right.''62 Similarly,Mkhize announced that ``this bill . . . prove(s) to the world that we asmembers of Inkatha practice that we preach .. . because . . . we arepledged to non-discrimination even on the ground of sex.''63

I am not suggesting a solely cynical motivation for the advancementof women's status by the KwaZulu elite. Buthelezi's speeches to theInkatha Women's Brigade convey a genuine faith in the power ofwomen as the critical component of community development andadvancement, as well as the ` backbone'' of his political support.64

What this instance reveals, however, is the bifurcated and con£ict-ridden nature of Inkatha's power base such that it could, on the onehand, o¡er to women legal rights and equality and, on the other, attemptto circumscribe these within the structures of chie£y patriarchy throughthe discourse of Zulu tradition.

These tensions also feature in Buthelezi's political addresses as illus-trated by two recurrent narratives. First, genealogical recitations areamong the most repetitive and complex narrative devices in Buthelezi'sspeeches. A majority of his addresses begin with or contain a recitationof his genetic links to various male heroes of distant and recent historicalimportance. Buthelezi demonstrates blood ties ^ as well as ties ofassociation ^ both with the Zulu Royal house and with the ` foundingfathers'' of the African National Congress. In establishing these links,Buthelezi intends, most obviously, to legitimate his position as a premierpolitical leader. More crucially, in using this rhetorical medium twopolitical traditions are linked ^ one customary, one civic. As theinheritor of Zulu tribal leadership and as the ` rightful heir'' of the earlyANC, Buthelezi embodies (literally, in his claim) two traditions that

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merge through the blood that £ows in his veins. The customary tradi-tion is rooted in Zulu patrilineage and speaks to his position as a chief,as counselor to the King, as the curator of Zulu cultural tradition, andas the leader of the Zulu resistance against apartheid. The civic tradi-tion is represented by his association with the founders of the AfricanNational Congress prior to its exile and speaks to Buthelezi's positionas president of Inkatha, his claim that Inkatha is the ``rightful heir of theANC,'' and his bid for leadership of black resistance against apartheid.Presenting himself as the embodiment of two distinct ` bloodlines,''Buthelezi fuses two political traditions. Often, as the following excerptillustrates, he includes both genealogies in a single recitation.

My role is ordained by history. Through my mother, Princess Magogo kaDinuzulu I trace my descent to His Majesty's great-grandfather, King Dinuzuluka Cetshwayo. It was my uncle King Solomon ka Dinuzulu who gave myfather, Chief Mathole Buthelezi, then Prime Minister of the King and ofKwaZulu, his own sister, Princess Magogo Mantithi Sibilele Constance kaDinuzulu, to re-emphasize the historic ties between the two families and withthe intent of creating the blood ties which bind us together. From my mother'sknee onwards, I was drawn into politics. The great founding father of theANC, Dr. Pixley ka Isaka Seme, was my uncle.65

Buthelezi's e¡orts to bridge political traditions are demonstrated inother ways. Photographs in Inkatha's publications Uxoxi and ClarionCall typically pair Buthelezi and Zulu King goodwill Zwelithini, o¡er-ing a vision of twin leadership in which the symbolic labor is neatlydivided. Zwelithini embodies the heritage of aristocratic Zulu kings.Buthelezi, the cabinet minister of the modern KwaZulu state (KLA),represents the modern realpolitik. Their constant joint appearancessymbolize the consanguinity of the traditional and modern.

A second narrative device a¤rms that Inkatha felt pressured to resolvetensions between chie£y authority and liberal democracy. This time,the objective was to demonstrate that the institution of chieftainshipwas consistent with liberal democratic criteria for legitimate govern-ment. For example:

The institution of chieftainship is a people's institution. It is an instrumentwhich has served the black people for several generations. It has always beenan instrument in the hands of the people. It has always been a democraticinstitution.66

Statements like this serve both to support the authority of chiefs them-selves and to challenge the view that the institution is necessarily adespotic and reactionary element. While Buthelezi did not utterly

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ignore the role played by chiefs under indirect rule, he sidelined theissue by admonishing ``certain'' chiefs who didn't ``follow the traditions''of this institution. Another strategy was to cite examples of chiefs whosepolitical involvement were beyond criticism. Albert Luthuli was themost frequently cited example of a chief who was ` a true leader ofthe people and a democrat'' and who ` saw no con£ict in being a chiefand at the same time being president of the African National Con-gress.''67

Notably, in both of the narrative strategies to which I have referred, thelanguage and symbolism of patrilineage and patriarchal tradition areemployed in an attempt to smooth over con£icting principles ofauthority among elites. While it would certainly appear reasonable tointerpret this as simply con¢rming that nationalism and the domina-tion of women go hand in hand, such a reading overlooks the di¡erentimplications for women at stake in the con£ict between patriarchalideals. Moreover, I would argue that the very urgency and defensivenessof these narratives display how unmanageable the issue of patriarchalunity proved to be. Inkatha's gender rhetoric is notable for what itreveals of the contested nature of gender power.

Men, migrant labor, and political identity

A 1941 poster calendar produced by the South African Native RecruitingCorporation of theWitwatersrand Native Labour Association picturesa young, bare breasted African woman standing in the open country-side and pointing across the page to the image of the gold miningcompound. The caption reads, ` Boys, go and work in the mines whereyou could earn a lot of money to pay for your lobola (bridewealth)when you want to marry.''68

What this recruitment poster portrays ^ and what its creators under-stood when designing it ^ is the linkage between sexual relations in therural areas, the gendered migrant labor system, and ` white'' capitalaccumulation through mining and agriculture. Underlying the poster'sportrayal of the woman and the mine ^ geographically separate andyet linked by the invisible young male worker to whom the image isaddressed ^ are institutional realities that manage the social spacesseparating rural and urban spheres. The pivotal location of Africanmen in this social landscape had a critical impact on Inkatha'snation-building. Travelling between the urban workplace and the rural

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periphery, distinct spheres of masculine practice, status, and socialpower, powerfully shaped the political identities of migrant workers.

The political and economic transformation of the region over the lastcentury-and-a-half can be viewed, in one sense, as the unfoldingof struggles, resolutions, and adaptations between African agrarianpatriarchy and patriarchal capitalism. At the heart of these changeswas the assertion of power by the colonial, and later apartheid, statesto appropriate and alter African institutions for both political controland capitalist development. From the colonial perspective, the greatestbene¢t of containing Africans under indirect rule was that it facilitateda particular type of migrant labor system that retained the rural orien-tation of the African worker and his accountability to his chief andhomestead. Women's location within the family and extended com-munity ^ as mothers, wives, agricultural producers; as keepers ofhome and as the backbone of village life ^ was the all important factorthat impeded rapid urbanization but that allowed for the ``freeing'' ofmale labor. Male migration to the workplace was thus an oscillatingmovement between urban and rural spheres, but with workers' politicaland domestic lives ¢rmly rooted in the rural countryside. African urban-ization was dangerous politically as it tended to ``detribalize'' workersby generating new identities along the politicized lines of race andclass. These could be battled by denying Africans permanent residencyin the cities and formalizing control over geographical mobility thoughPass laws and other restrictions.

A rich literature on South African migrant labor o¡ers a view of thecomplexities of African migrant worker identity, most extensively inrelation to work in the mines. It conveys a picture of migrants as thebearers of heterogeneous expectations and practices associated withlives divided between workplace and rural home life.69 Work contractsvaried, but for most men wage earning meant traveling signi¢cantdistances for extensive periods of time ^ ranging from several monthsto two years. Many men never returned home, becoming amatshipa(lost to the mines).70 Dunbar Moodie rejects the portrayal of migrantmen as moving between ` two worlds,'' highlighting how the men's ownpractices produce a needed sense of integrity in the experience ofmigrancy.71 The impressive range of strategies for withstanding thedangers of migrant work is undergirded by workers' personal aspirationsto use earnings toward establishing their fortunes back home, wherepatriarchal advantage can be experienced and where non-alienatedlabor may be practiced. The fortunes earned in the cities and mines,

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small as they were, were regarded as useful in winning ` the love of anygirl you want to marry.''72 Patrick Harries shows how, in some ruralsocieties, migrant labor has become part of a young man's passage intoadult manhood, providing him with not only the ¢nancial means forpaying bridewealth but also the worldly experience necessary to head ahousehold and participate in community decision-making.73 The com-plex practices, stories, songs, and worldviews that give expression to theexperience of migrant life do not deny the reality of the ``two worlds''between which men are compelled to travel. Sotho workers describedin song the journey to the dangerous mines as ``assum(ing) anotherblanket . . . . In crossing the river I become a new man / di¡erent fromthe one I was at home.''74

Mahmood Mamdani is emphatic about the opposition between thepolitical lives of men in rural and urban spheres of social life. Undertribal law, men are subjected to the authority of chiefs; in the civilsociety, liberal citizenship reigns as a revolutionary ideal. The politicsof liberation draw out the tensions between imbricated political realities,and these tensions are crystallized in the social location of migrantworkers. Migrant laborers constitute the ` rural in the urban,'' whoseallegiances are perhaps more complicated than any other social group-ing.75

The migrant worker needs to be seen as the locus of all major social contra-dictions in such a context. Besides articulating the tensions generated by amarket economy ^ those of class, gender and age ^ migrant labor also cameto be the focus of di¡erences reinforced by the mode of rule that was decen-tralized despotism (indirect rule): the interethnic and the urban-rural . . . .Moving like a conveyer belt between the rural and the urban, it was, toparaphrase Marx, a class in civil society but not of civil society.76

The social location of migrant men had critical implications forInkatha's mobilization and its masculinist politics. The political agencyof workers was a sought resource; ¢rstly, because men preside over thepoliticized spaces of workplace and street and are therefore the van-guard; and secondly, because securing their loyalty against competingallegiances staves o¡ the threatening prospect of their counter-agency.

Robert Morrell makes a provisional distinction between African andblack masculinities to convey the di¡erent expectations of, and pre-scriptions for, behavior associated with manhood in rural and urbanareas in the post-war period, a period that saw increased urbanizationand a critical expansion and development of black township life.77

Di¡erences among men become more salient in the context of political

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mobilization. Within the urban environment, migrant workers had anumber of political options available to them. Trade unions promoteda socialist politics that centered on issues of class struggle, and SteveBiko's Black Consciousness movement promoted a politics that advo-cated the uni¢cation of African (and later, Indian and Coloured) peopleon the grounds of a common racialized experience. Rural-urban divi-sions between men were compounded by generational tensions.Violentconfrontations between the ANC and Inkatha often manifested asclashes between township youth (ANC ` Comrades'') and older Inkathavigilantes. The scorn expressed in the words of one young activistreveals how ` peasant proletarians'' were regarded:

On the farms they have got nothing to ¢ght for. They have got their own cow,their own space, their own chief. And they think that they have got everythingthey could dream of. Such a person knows nothing about rights, about theneeds of black people, such is content to be an oppressed laborer.78

In an important sense, confrontations in street and workplace overpolitical ideals and agency involved struggles also over meanings ofmanhood. The de¢nition of being a radical, a militant, a freedom¢ghter, a comrade ^ and simultaneously, what it means to be a traitor,a ` collaborator,'' and an ``informer'' ^ was signi¢cantly bound up inwhat it means to be a man. The uses of violence, the displays ofweapons, the wearing of special uniforms, the debates over the meaningof loyalty and betrayal, wisdom and defeat, were gendered practices anddiscourses. Indeed, at one level, the workplace and the street consti-tuted forums in which the gender identities of men could be establishedand subverted through politicized debates and displays. The diverseconceptions of breadwinner, father, husband, worker, elder, youthmilitant, and leader were salient political issues. Inkatha was obligedto address and de¢ne these relevant aspects of political manliness as itfaced accusations by the ANC, its militant youth contingent, and bytrade union a¤liates.

In addressing the Zulu-speaking working class, Inkatha's politics ofZulu masculinity necessarily had to incorporate and rede¢ne the notionsof blackness, working class radicalism, liberal pluralism, and tradition.Because it promoted free market capitalism, working class politics re-quired prudent handling. On May 1st 1986, Inkatha launched the UnitedWorkers Union of South Africa (UWUSA), its own pro-capitalist tradeunion intended to vie with the socialist Congress of South African TradeUnions. Of little power in its own right, UWUSA nevertheless de-nounced international divestment, strikes, and other radical worker

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actions. De¢ant and martial notions of Zulu masculinity had to betempered with masculinities that were amenable to industrial discipline.

Again, Buthelezi's speeches provide ample evidence of this di¤culty.For example, on the occasion of the launching of UWUSA, he speaksagainst divestment as a strategy for liberation by invoking the issue ofZulu masculinity:

I have stated very often that we here are descendants of brave warriors, andthat the blood of warriors £ows in our veins and that we would not mindsu¡ering and dying if that were to result in our liberation. I have stated that Iam certain that if disinvestment and sanctions could result in the downfall ofthe present government that I feel certain that blacks would support theirimposition.79

On another occasion, he rejects radical workplace actions, addressingmen in their capacity as breadwinners:

I say only a father who wants to destroy the humanity of his wife and childrenwill want to make them starve because the External Mission (exiled ANC)wants them to starve. Only a man who has abandoned all decency willdestroy the factory where he works to earn the money to buy the food andclothing, and to provide shelter for his family.80

Industrial life is sometimes construed as a historical extension of anolder way of life. In another instance requiring the justi¢cation ofchieftainship (on this occasion concerning the tribute paid by thepeople in the form of a chief's new house), Buthelezi explains that:

In the past, people went to the bush when our land was full of dangerousanimals to cut poles and branches to build up a chief's great place or theking's residence.. . . Our people were prepared to be attacked and even killedby dangerous animals while in the bush when cutting poles, branches andgrass . . . . The dangers of modern living are not lions and mambas. Peoplework in dangerous foundries, factories, and mines. They are as much exposedto the dangers of injury and death as they work to earn money as those who inthe past went into animal-infested bush. The poles of today consist of cash.81

The hazards of industrial work are not viewed as occasions for protest,but rather proof of cultural loyalty and manhood. On this theme, wagework is construed as an arena where the mettle of manhood is testedand proved. (``I believe that black workers are man enough to take thesting out of capitalism.'' ` I always tell the world that black workers areman enough to stand up for their own rights in any worker situation.''` Black workers are not afraid of white bosses.'') In other speeches,industrial tests of manhood are linked to the manliness requiredfor Inkatha's ideal of political agency. To mining o¤cials, Buthelezi

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declared that ` work situations with their heavy demands of disciplineand endurance are far better training ground than any of the so-calledguerilla camps outside the country, in making us men among men... .It is this concern with our involvement in the struggle . . . that leads meto endorse the actions of anyone who goes into the mining industry.''82

The representation of Zulu masculinity in relation to workers wasJanus-faced. Buthelezi called upon Zulu men as workers and as war-riors. As workers, men were entreated to be a regiment of disciplinedlaborers and responsible breadwinners. As warriors, they were o¡eredthe valor, pride, and glory of their renowned forbears.Worker identityspoke to the contemporary concerns of men in the language of modern-ity; warrior identity o¡ered a blood brotherhood and worthy heritagethat could ease the anonymity and alienation that constituted migrantworking life. The ideal Zulu worker sought only a guarantee of employ-ment and advancement within the framework of industrial capitalism;the Zulu warrior promised loyalty to tradition and the authority of theking and his great men. Paired within the framework of Buthelezi'snation-building discourse, the identities of worker and warrior wereconstructed as complementary and essential aspects of Zulu masculinity.

These narratives were voiced to a working class rife with social frag-mentation. Inkatha's promotion of Zulu worker masculinity clearly didnot successfully speak to the immediate interests of organized workersor of township youth. Other liberation movements (especially theANC and trade unions within the United Democratic Front) evincedmore success in mobilizing men by speaking to identities that resonatedwith their experiences and concerns as workers, blacks, South Africancitizens, and disenfranchised youth.

Conclusion

For nationalism, the rhetoric of gender o¡ers a powerful frameworkfor constructions of political collectivity and national cohesion. Yet itslimitations are as signi¢cant in shaping the course of nationalist politicsas its e¤cacy. ` Failed'' nationalisms make this very clear.

While the particulars of this case may not match those of other nation-alist movements, they indicate the complex picture that emerges whengender rhetoric is examined as an expression of social contestationrather than social cohesion. I have argued that the case of Inkatha's

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Zulu nationalism, placed within the historical and structural realities ofthe South African context, o¡ers a counterpoint to feminist studies that,implicitly or explicitly, construe patriarchies and nations as mutuallysupportive constructions. Contrary to appearances, the ` hyper-mascu-linist'' discourse employed by Inkatha does not denote the ideas andpractices of gender as straightforward symbolic capital. It would be agrave mistake to interpret its starkly patriarchal orientation as yetanother instance re£ecting the utility of ` traditional'' gender ideologiesfor nationalist constructions.

The ``masculinized memory, masculinized humiliations, and mascu-linized hopes'' common within nationalism should not be interpretedas the ful¢llment of its implicit promise for ` deep, horizontal comrade-ship'' and fraternal leveling. To do so would be to endorse a view ofgender power that obscures what is at stake both for nationalist move-ments and for the status of the women and men within them.Viewedthrough the lens of Buthelezi's ethnic discourse, gender cannot betheorized as entirely functional for nation-building. As much as it isemployed as a naturalizing ideology to imbue a nation with emotionalfamiliarity and a sense of collective intimacy, the capacity of genderrhetoric to e¡ect such an achievement should be empirically scrutinized.Indeed, exploring the unease between masculinities and nationalisms,the instances when they fail to articulate well with one another, wouldbe an important new direction for research of gender and nationalprocesses and for feminist theory.

Studies of gender and nationalism need to conceptualize patriarchiesand masculinities as historically situated within the speci¢c modes ofpolitical control, production, and reproduction. Accounting for genderpower as a contested terrain means examining masculinist construc-tions of nation, ethnicity, and race for what they suggest also abouthierarchies and divisions between men. Bi-polar conceptions of genderpower ^ men's dominance over women ^ are not adequate and more-over may conceal the dynamics of nationalist movements. In nation-building processes, the con£icts between men and between patriarchiesare as important to examine as the solidarities and points of agreement.This is because such con£icts a¡ect the trajectories and outcomes ofnationalist movements and, more critically, the political lives of thewomen and men within them.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Gerhard Mare for his comments on an earlier versionof this article and for his help in securing key primary materials. Mythanks also to Marilyn Carter and to the Theory and Society Editorsfor comments on a later draft.

Notes

1. For example, see special issue of o¡ our backs, April 1994.2. See, for example, the special issue of Daedelus, Spring 1993 that reexamines

nationalism.3. Kumari Jayawardena, Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World (London: Zed

Press, 1986); Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1989); and The Morning After (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1993); Floya Anthias and Yuval-Davis, Women-Nation-State (New York:St. Martin's Press, 1989); SilviaWalby, ` Woman and Nation,'' International Journalof Comparative SociologyXXXIII, 1 (2), (1992); Anne McClintock, ` Family Feuds:Gender, Nationalism, and Family,'' Feminist Review (Summer 1993); Nira Yuval-Davis, ` Gender and Nation,'' Ethnic and Racial Studies 16/4 (1993).

4. McClintock, ``Family Feuds.''5. See Enloe, The Morning After; Jean Bethke Elshtain,Women and War (New York:

Basic Book Publishers, 1987), Jean Elshtain and Sheila Tobias, editors.6. Yuval-Davis, ` Gender and Nation.''7. Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class (London: Verso,

1991), 49.8. See, for example,VronWare, Beyond the Pale (London: Verso, 1992).9. Enloe, Bananas, 44.

10. Joanne Nagel, ` Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Makingof Nations,'' Ethnic and Racial Studies 21/2 (1998).

11. Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1991), 9.12. Anthony Smith, Theories of Nationalism (New York: Torchbook Library Edition,

1971), 22.13. A notable exception is Jayawardena, Feminism and Nationalism14. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 7.15. Heidi Hartmann, ` The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a

More Progressive Union,'' inWomen and Revolution, Lydia Sargent, editor (Boston:South End Press, 1981).

16. For example, see Je¡ Hearn and David Collinson, ` Theorizing Unities and Di¡er-ences Between Men and Between Masculinities,'' in Theorizing Masculinities,Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman, editors (Thousand Oaks, London, and NewDelhi: Sage Publications, 1994).

17. In the context of African nationalism, the class origins of nationalism are discussed byJohn Saul, ` The Dialectic of Class and Tribe,'' in The State and Revolution in EasternAfrica: Essays by John Saul (NewYork and London: Monthly Review Press, 1979).

18. See, for example, Linda Kintz, Between Jesus and the Market: Emotions that Matterin Right Wing America (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997).

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19. To a certain extent, it demysti¢es (or de-biologizes) masculinity as a ` force'' innationalist violence. Enloe, The Morning After, and David Morgan in ``Theatre ofWar'' in Brod and Kaufman, Theorizing Masculinities, argue against the psycho-analytical view that masculinity in war is mobilized through men's anxieties aboutdeath, homoeroticism, etc. See also, Helen Pringle, ` The Making of an AustralianCivic Identity: The Bodies of Men and the Memory of War,'' in Geo¡ry Stokes, editor,The Politics of Identity in Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

20. Gerhard Mare, Ethnicity and Politics in South Africa (London: Zed Press, 1993), 68.See also, Daphna Golan, Inventing Shaka: Using History in the Construction ofZulu Nationalism (Boulder and London: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 1995); Them-bisa Waetjen and Gerhard Mare, ` Workers and Warriors: Inkatha's Politics ofMasculinity in the 1980s,'' Journal of Contemporary African Studies 17/2 (1999).

21. Tania Broughton, ` Here They Are: KZN's New Casinos.'' (The Mercury, August 7,2000), 7.

22. Sara Gertrude Millin, The South Africans (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1927),259.

23. Ibid., 277.24. Patrick Harries, ` Imagery, Symbolism, and Tradition in a South African Bantustan:

Mangostuthu Buthelezi Inkatha and Zulu History,'' History and Theory 32/4(1993).

25. Speech by King Goodwill Zwelithini, 26 May 1991, Johannesburg.26. Buthelezi, numerous speeches.27. Speech by Buthelezi, 1May 1986, Durban.28. Speech by Buthelezi, 29 may 1979, Ulundi.29. Speech by Buthelezi, 25 September 1989, Stanger.30. Thus, Gellner's caution that nationalism is not the reassertion of pre-colonial

identities but rather the ` crystallization of new ones suitable for the conditionsnow prevailing'' can be extended more speci¢cally to its masculinist expressions.Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalisms (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), 49.

31. O¤cial numbers calculating loss of life in this con£ict have varied from 15,000 to` more than 20,000.'' I have chosen to cite the most conservative ¢gure since thevalidity of my point is hardly further substantiated by the larger (and probablymore accurate) ¢gure.

32. ` The worst election irregularities, and possibly the best case for the invalidation ofan election, came from the con£ict-torn province of KwaZulu-Natal. The WeeklyMail of May 6 reported that in some areas of northern KwaZulu ballot boxes, whenopened, contained neatly stacked piles of ballot papers with exactly 2,000 votes forInkatha and only a handful for the ANC. There were also reports of pirate votingstations in IFP controlled areas, accounting for anything up to 500,000 votes .. . theballots were counted largely as they were. . . .'' 210. Reynolds, Andrew, ` The Results,''in Andrew Reynolds, editor, Election '94, South Africa (London: James Currey;CapeTown and Johannesburg: David Philip, 1994).

33. Buthelezi has served as Minister of Home A¡airs both under Nelson Mandela andThabo Mbeki and during the 1999 elections was considered a likely candidate fordeputy vice president, an o¤ce that was instead given to a less controversial Zulu,Jacob Zuma.

34. See Anthea Je¡rey, The Natal Story: 16 Years of Con£ict (Johannesburg: SouthAfrican Institute of Race Relations, 1997), for a full account of this con£ict.

35. Gerhard Mare and Georgina Hamilton, An Appetite for Power (Bloomington:Indiana University Press, Johannesburg: Raven Press, 1997), 227.

150

36. See Robert Morrell, editor, Political Economy and Identities in KwaZulu-Natal(Durban: Indicator Press, 1996).

37. For more on precapitalist Nguni societies see, for example, Je¡ Guy, The Destructionof the Zulu Kingdom (London: Longman, 1979); Je¡ Guy, ` Gender Oppression inSouthern Africa's Precapitalist Societies,'' in Cherryl Walker, editor, Women andGender in South Africa to 1945 (Cape Town: David Phillip, 1990); John Lambert,Betrayed Trust: Africans and the State in Colonial Natal (Durban: University ofNatal Press, 1995); Shula Marks, The Ambiguities of Dependence in South Africa(Johannesburg: Raven Press, 1996).

38. Guy, ``Gender Oppression.''39. Guy,The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom.40. Mare and Hamilton, Appetite for Power, 17.41. Morell,Wright, and Meintjes, ` Colonialism and the Establishment of White Domi-

nation,'' in Morell, Political Economy and Identities, 57.42. Ibid.43. This, for example, goes some way in explaining why it was men and not women

who were ``available'' to form the core of migrant labor in South Africa. SeeBelinda Bozzoli, ` Marxism, Feminism, and South African Studies,'' Journal ofSouthern African Studies 9/1 (1983). The resilience of precapitalist patriarchy, withwomen's labor at the core of a stable subsistence, made the containment of women inthe rural homestead a point of collusion between colonial and African patriarchies.As the domestic backbone of both modes of production, for a long while womenwere not allowed to migrate to the cities without permission of the chief.

44. Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1996).

45. Mare and Hamilton, Appetite for Power, 88.46. Henry Slater, ` The Changing Pattern of Economic Relationships in Rural Natal,

1838^1914,'' in Economy and Society in Pre-industrial South Africa, Shula Marksand AnthonyAttmore, editors (London: Longman Press, 1980).

47. Cherryl Walker, ` Gender and the Migrant Labour System,'' in Walker,Women andGender.

48. Sheila Meintjes, ` Family and Gender in the Christian Community of Edendale,'' inWalker,Women and Gender.

49. Marks, Ambiguities; Mare and Hamilton, Appetite for Power; Morrell,Wright, andMeintjes, ``Colonialism.''

50. Shula Marks, ``Patriotism, Patriarchy, and Purity; Natal and the Politics ofZulu Ethnic Consciousness,'' in Leroy Vail, editor, The Creation of Tribalism inSouthern Africa (London: James Currey; Berkeley: University of California Press,1989).

51. Rand Daily Mail, Jan 27, 1971, quoted in Paul Forsyth, The Past as Present: ChiefANMGButhelezi's Use of History as a Source of Political Legitimation (UnpublishedMA thesis, University of Natal, 1989), 54.

52. Forsyth,The Past as Present, 18.53. Saul, ` Dialectic of Class and Tribe,'' 361.54. Buthelezi's speeches were the most important vehicle of Inkatha's nation-building.

As primary spokesperson and president of Inkatha, Buthelezi's speeches are repre-sentative of the movement's rhetoric.

55. Mare and Hamilton, Appetite, 88^89.56. Buthelezi's rightful position as a chief is uncertain due to the claim of his elder

brother who was at one point exiled to the Transvaal by the South African govern-

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ment. See Mzala, Gatcha Buthelezi: Chief with a Double Agenda (London: ZedPress, 1988), 6.

57. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject, 49^52.58. KwaZulu Legislative Assembly transcripts. 18 May 1980. Emphasis added.59. Ibid.60. KwaZulu Legislative Assembly transcripts. v. 24, June 1981. Emphasis added.61. Ibid.62. KwaZulu Legislative Assembly transcripts. v. 23, 29 May 1981.63. KwaZulu Legislative Assembly transcripts. v. 24, June 1981.64. For more on the InkathaWomen's brigade, see Shireen Hassim, ` Family, Mother-

hood, and Zulu Nationalism,'' Feminist Review (1993); also Thembisa Waetjen,` The `Home' in Homeland: Gender, National Space, and Inkatha's Politics ofEthnicity,'' Ethnic and Racial Studies 22/4 (1999).

65. Speech by Buthelezi, 4 November 1984, Ongoye.66. Speech by Buthelezi, 18 February 1984, Kwatambamhlope.67. Ibid.68. TEBATimes 1994, 7.69. See, for example, Dunbar Moodie with Vivienne Ndatshe, Going for Gold (Berke-

ley: University of California Press, 1994); Viet Erlmann, Nightsong: Performance,Power and Practice in South Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996):William Beinhart, ` Worker Consciousness, Ethnic Particularism, and Nationalism,''Shula Marks and Stanley Trapido, editors, Race, Class and Nation in TwentiethCentury South Africa (London: Longman, 1987); Patrick Harries, Work, Culture,and Identity: Migrant Laborers in Mozambique and South Africa (London: JamesCurrey, 1994).

70. Moodie, Going for Gold, 15.71. Ibid.72. Agency for Industrial Mission (AIM), Another Blanket (Roodepoort: AIM 1976), 7.73. Harries,Work, Culture and Identity, 157.74. AIM, Another Blanket, 12 (quoted in Moodie, Going for Gold).75. See especially chapter 7 in Mamdani, Citizen and Subject.76. Ibid, 218.77. Robert Morrell, ``Of Boys and Men: Masculinity and Gender in Southern African

Studies,'' Journal of Southern African Studies 24/4 (1998).78. Catherine Cambell, Identity and Gender in a Changing Society: The Social Identity

of South African Township Youth (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Bristol,1992), 622.

79. Speech by Buthelezi, 1May 1986, Durham.80. Speech by Buthelezi, 28 September 1985, Umlazi.81. Speech by Buthelezi, 17 December 1978, Quadi Chief's residence.82. TEBA times, 1982.

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