The failure of ethnic nationalism: land, power and the politics of clanship on the South African high veld 1860–1990

Abstract

AbstractDuring the 1980s a great deal was written about the role of missionaries, anthropologists, colonial officials and intellectuals in the ‘invention’ of ethnic and tribal categories in Africa. Today few scholars would question the complicity of colonial agents in the construction of ethnic or tribal identities. Despite these interventions, however, there is a growing realisation that processes of ethnicity formation are contingent on other factors as well. This article explores this proposition by investigating the role of the sub-ethnic politics of clanship in the north-eastern Orange Free State of South Africa over the past century and its specific contribution to the failure of ethnic nationalism in the region. It concludes that, given the abuse of ethnicity by the South African state, there is an enormous temptation to over-determine the role of the state in ethnic formation in South Africa and to underplay the internal dynamics of ethnicity building.