In all media reports on last weekend’s coronation of King Leruo Molotlegi of the Bafokeng, the description “tribe” was thrown about with abandon. Black journalists, who should at least know better, also used this degrading term.
The term “tribe” has long been shunned as a thoroughly derogatory depiction of people. Bluntly, it means savage and backward.
But there is something much more serious happening here, a complex interplay of factors.
The silence of the Bafokeng royal household on the use of such a deplorable term is confusing when taken at face value, but very significant when closely examined.
King Leruo knows he is not the head of a primitive people. The use of this term is part of the mysticism around the coronation — the idea that this was a traditional ceremony, the celebration of an “800-year-old unbroken dynasty” and ostensibly history.
How do we explain the contradiction that King Leruo is a trained architect, but has railed against “bad Western influences” on the youth of today? Clearly he has embraced what he calls a “Western life”, but when it suits him, and by pandering to tradition, deplores that very “Western life”.
This historical distortion of an unbroken dynasty of 800 years serves to bestow on Bafokeng chiefs (under the guise of acting for the whole “tribe”) an unchallenged, exclusive right to the wealth of the area.
It is a prime example of the height of modern myth making in South Africa, an example of the reconstruction of history that abuses identities in the name of tradition. There is no tribal dynasty in Southern Africa that can trace, with any measure of oral or written historical accuracy, its past to 800 years ago.
How many of us know, or care to know, that of the major enduring groups of people in South Africa, such as the Basotho, amaZulu, amaXhosa and Batswana, none can trace their concrete existence as entities to more than 200 years ago?
In reality most of the “tribes” that abound today are no more than 150 years old.
The amaZulu and Basotho as we know them today were created by Shaka and Moshoeshoe respectively as powerful groups just less than 200 years ago.
Equally ludicrous is the assertion that the Bafokeng “tribe” is one of the richest in Africa. There are no rich “tribes” or nations anywhere in the world, let alone in Africa. The Bafokeng, like most South Africans, are having a hard time.
The only possible time tribes were rich was in antiquity, when there were abundant resources and people were few. The myth of the richest tribe simply does not stand up to careful scrutiny in the present.
The stark truth is that only segments within such groups are rich, and those are the chiefs and those around them. This explains why the Bafokeng royal house and its establishment is comfortable with terms like “tribe” that celebrate mythical harmonious societies of the past.
The notion that the Bafokeng are a rich tribe legitimises the whole social order around King Leruo, but the truth is different.
It is misleading to make people believe that there is some paradise enclave called Phokeng in the North West, where people wallow in clover. When will black people escape the clutches of subordination operating under the guise of a traditional glorious past?
Increasingly after 1994, especially in recent months (with all the pressure on the government to take heed of “chiefs”), there has arisen a serious threat in society. This is the rehashing and entrenchment of ethnic enclaves that are vying for political and economic power in the new order, all ostensibly in the name of some “tribes” that were forged in the past.
Consider also the preposterous view that there are people in this country who are reviving what they claim is a San dynasty, when we know that nothing like that has ever existed historically.
Thabisi Hoeane is a lecturer in the political and international studies department at Rhodes University.