The government was attacked on all fronts on Wednesday on issues pertaining to traditional leadership, but some government officials tried to downplay the rift between the state and the chiefs.
Some traditional leaders got more angry when Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa did not show up, as was reportedly planned, at their meeting in Benoni on Wednesday.
Mpiyezintombi Mzimela, the chairman of the National House of Traditional Leaders (NHTL), rejected the white paper on traditional leadership and criticised the Communal Land Rights Bill.
”Without communal land, there is no traditional leadership,” Mzimela said. ”So, we should not be looked at as damn fools if we say ‘we don’t see liberation’.”
He said the white paper on traditional leadership was not going to define the role and functions of traditional leaders until the Constitution had been amended.
”The white paper process is not an attempt to amend the Constitution,” he said. ”Our powers and functions have been obliterated.”
One conference delegate said: ”If it comes to a push, we must get rid of the Constitution. We should not even vote.”
The white paper was adopted by the cabinet earlier this month. The new law will seek to define the role of traditional leadership and to transform it in line with the Constitution, government spokespersonmen recently said.
The aim of the government was to abolish the institution of traditional leadership, but they have failed because ”we have resisted”, Mzimela said.
”But we have not won the battle,” he said. ”Some of us are tired of waiting. When people are tired, they must come (up) with another strategy; they should not surrender, that is cowardice.”
Mzimela and a number of traditional leaders converged at a Benoni conference centre on Wednesday to discuss the participation of traditional leaders in a democratic state.
Seth Nthai, the head of a task team on traditional leadership, said: ”Nobody… is saying that the institution should not continue to exist.
”The white paper is not eroding it, it is enhancing the role of traditional leaders. You can go through the white paper, you will not find anything that says we want to erode it,” he said.
Shilowa was scheduled to address the opening of the annual conference at 10am, but by midday he had not arrived. Tshwane metro mayor Smangaliso Mkhatshwa did not turn up too, but sent a representative.
Thabo Masebe, a spokesperson for Shilowa, said the Gauteng premier was never invited to speak at the event, and had been on holiday since Monday.
”He was never scheduled to speak at the conference,” Masebe said. ”That is not correct, they are wrong.”
NHTL spokesperson Sibusiso Nkosi said the Department of Local Government and Provincial Affairs had organised the event, and it included Shilowa as a guest speaker in the programme.
Zam Titus, a special adviser to Local Government and Provincial Affairs minister Sydney Mufamadi, said: ”They are entirely to blame for this. It is their failure, they put somebody’s name down without confirming.”
Traditional leaders said Titus was the man the chiefs had been dealing with in organising the conference which would end on Friday.
Mzimela said when he tried to find out what time Shilowa would get to the conference venue, his office told him that he was not coming.
”He is not with us here. Something very painful happened that we, in our attempt to improve working relations with the Department of Local Government and Provincial Affairs, were caught in a trap,” Mzimela said. ”In the process we were sabotaged.” – Sapa