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A Voice in the Big House: The Career of Headman Enoch Mamba*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Colin Bundy
Colin Bundy
Affiliation:
Department of External Studies, University of Oxford
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Extract

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the administration of the Transkei was instituted, codified and elaborated. The role of the headman was crucial: he was directly responsible to the magistrate, and his ward (‘location’) became the basic administrative unit. The headman's position was also profoundly ambiguous. He was at once a state official (responsible for enforcing new legal, economic and political relationships) and a spokesman for and defender of the inhabitants of his location.

Although invested with considerable powers, headmen had to remain responsive to popular pressures. In tracing the career of a single prominent headman, Enoch Mamba, this article demonstrates the possibilities and contradictions within the post. Mamba entered government employment in Idutywa as a clerk/interpreter; was appointed headman in 1893; and was dismissed – after attempting to unseat the magistrate – in 1896. Resilient and resourceful, Mamba won reinstatement by 1904; he served as a highly effective and occasionally authoritarian headman and as District and General Councillor until his death in 1916. He created and led one of the first pan-tribal political organizations in the Transkei and came to play an active role in the (Cape) SANC and the SANNC. As a politician, Mamba remained sensitive to rural issues and differed from urban-based politicians (like Rubusana, Pelem, Jabavu) in his populist and ‘Africanist’ accents.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , October 1981 , pp. 531 - 550
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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Footnotes

*

The research upon which this article is based was made possible by a generous grant from the Social Science Research Council, and I gratefully acknowledge this assistance.

References

1 Genovese, E., In Red and Black (London, 1971), 125.Google Scholar

2 The annexation of Pondoland in 1894 completed the processes of conquest and incorporation. See Saunders, C. C., ‘The Annexation of the Transkeian Territories (1872–1895) with particular reference to British and Cape policy’ (University of Oxford, D.Phil, thesis, 1972).Google Scholar

3 Hammond-Tooke, W. D., Command or Consensus: The Development of Transkeian Local Government (Cape Town, 1975), 77–9.Google Scholar

4 Cape of Good Hope Official Papers, Report and Proceedings of The Government Commission on Native Laws and Customs (G.4–'83), paragraph 19.

5 Cape Archives (CA), Secretary for Native Affairs (SNA), Circular No. 1 of 1890, 18 April 1890.

6 CA, Native Affairs (NA), Box 466, C. G. H. Bell, Resident Magistrate (RM) to Chief Magistrate of Transkei (CMT), 13 May 1890.

7 Hammond-Tooke, , Command or Consensus, 108.Google Scholar

8 Gluckman, M., Custom and Conflict in Africa (Oxford, 1956)Google Scholar; idem, Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa (London, 1963), 41–4Google Scholar; and Gluckman, M., Mitchell, J. C. and Barnes, J.A., ‘The Village Headman in British Central Africa’ [1949], in Order and Rebellion, esp. 149–52.Google Scholar In particular, Gluckman characterizes the village headman as ’the man who moves among his subjects and who is involved in their day-to-day difficulties and struggles; yet who has to represent the state against them – he sees they pay their taxes and perform state-labour, he reports them if they break the law, and so forth… he is the man at the bottom of the state hierarchy, who most directly represents the state to his subordinates and yet who is moving among them and immediately subject to the pressure of their interests’ (Custom and Conflict, 51–2).

9 A long-serving government official wrote in 1893: ‘ Never has the country had a more loyal, more active, braver and smarter Police Force than the force of young natives under Sigidi and Smith Umhalla.’ (CA, Chief Magistrate of the Transkei (CMT), series 3, vol. 98 (3/98), deposition by J. Chalmers, 4 October 1893 encl. in RM to CMT, 30 May 1894.)

10 CA, CMT 2/26, RM Idutywa to CMT, 5 May 1891.

11 CA, CMT 3/101, RM Idutywa to CMT, 22 February 1902.

12 South African Native Affairs Commission 1903–1905 (SANAC), Minutes of evidence, 5 vols. (Cape Town, 1905), vol. ii, 1047.Google Scholar

13 CA, CMT 3/102, Mamba to RM Idutywa, 4 December 1903, encl. in RM Idutywa to CMT, 10 December 1903.

14 CA, CMT 2/26, RM Idutywa to CMT, 19 March 1891.

15 Testimonial by Mr Charles Bell, undated, but written on the occassion of Bell's departure from Idutywa in (?) February 1893; it appears several times in archives as an enclosure in other correspondence, e.g., CMT 3/99, C194/96, RM to Idutywa to CMT, 31 July 1896.

16 CA, CMT 3/98, encl. in RM Idutywa to CMT, 30 May 1894 is a remarkable ‘statement made by Sigidi before RM Idutywa 7 August 1893’, in which the Gcaleka chief recounts the history of his relationship with the Cape government, and outlines certain grievances.

17 CA, CMT 3/99, Mamba to RM Idutywa, 26 August 1895, encl. in RM to CMT, 4 September 1895.

18 CA, CMT 3/192, Minutes of meeting held on 11 May 1896 by RM Idutywa with Chiefs and Headmen.

19 CA, CMT 3/99, RM Idutywa to CMT, 31 October 1894.

20 See Brownlee, W. T., Reminiscences of a Transkeian (Pietermaritzburg, 1975), 139–45.Google Scholar

21 CA, CMT 3/99, C23/95, Minutes of Public Meeting… on 31 January 1895: in a single forceful speech, Mamba took up in some detail issues related to the registration of births and deaths, smallpox vaccinations, the new taxes, the road rates, plantation regulations, and the labour tax clause. Pamla, the next speaker, acknowledged that Mamba had ‘said all that is to be said’.

22 CA, CMT 3/98, RM Idutywa to CMT, 21 December 1893.

23 CMT 3/191, W. S. Davis to RM Idutywa, 6 March 1893 and W. S. Davis to CMT, 6 March 1893.

24 CMT 3/99, C15/95 and enclosures.

25 CA, NA 449, Memorandum on Charges against Mr W. Brownlee, by W. H. Scully, RM Nqamakwe, 7 April 1896.

26 CA, CMT 3/100, RM to CMT, 1 April 1897; Na 449, Memorandum on Charges against Mr Brownlee.

27 CA, NA 449, CMT to USNA, 12 October 1895.

28 CA, NA 449, Report on a Meeting held 22 November 1895, encl. in CMT to USNA, n.d.

29 CA, NA 449, 457/95, Telegram from Mamba to C. J. Rhodes, 6 December 1895.

30 CA, NA 449, RM Idutywa to CMT, 27 November 1895.

31 CMT 3/99, C37/95, RM Idutywa to CMT, ? December 1895.

32 CA, NA 449, Memorandum on Charges against Mr Brownlee.

33 CA, CMT 3/192, Mamba to CMT 29 June 1896 and Mamba to USNA, 14 September 1896.

34 CA, NA 527/A510, Asst. SNA to Prime Minister, 29 November 1901 (the phrase ‘ notorious and discredited’ was used earlier by the CMT, Sir Henry Elliot, CMT to SNA, 20 November 1901).

35 While headman, Mamba recruited and delivered batches of labour, apparently to rail construction works. Indeed, he left Idutywa in March 1896 under circumstances which complicated or confused the actual terms of his dismissal. He approached Brownlee for permission to travel to the Witwatersrand with a party of labourers. (This was after Scully's hearing but before Mamba was dismissed.) Brownlee granted leave for a fortnight, which Mamba overstayed; he explained (frequently) later that there had been ‘trouble’ with his labourers that he had had to deal with, and insisted that he overlooked the formality of renewing his leave of absence. In future years, Mamba was wont to believe – or to pretend to believe – that his delay in the Transvaal was one of the main reasons for his dismissal.

36 CA, NA 412, encl. in Mamba to SNA, 18 March 1897. Cf. NA 726/f381, Mamba to RM Idutywa: ‘I am well known in Indwe having property in that town, the mayor is well acquainted with me’.

37 CA, Commissioner for Lands (LND), 1/871 Li6069, May 1903 for Mamba's application for trading site in Lota; CMT 3/102, RM Idutywa to CMT, 10 August 1905 in re Mamba's application for trading site; NA 1004,11250/F140, SNA to T. L. Schreiner, 22 August 1907 in re Mamba's application for a farm under Act 16/18999.

38 Archives of Office of Supreme Court, Cape Town, File 160. 542 for Mamba's will and accompanying documents.

39 CMT 3/192, Mamba to CMT, 29 February 1896: ‘its chief object is to discuss matters to be forwarded to the chairmen of the District Councils and Chairman of the General Council and to General Government – I have been appointed as Chairman… before assuming the chair I have deemed it necessary first to report the existence of such meeting to you… and to ascertain whether headmen may attend the same.’

40 CA, NA 527/A510, SNA to Prime Minister, 9 January 1902 and enclosures for correspondence on Mamba and the Natives Vigilance Association. CMT to SNA, 20 November 1901, held that ‘Whatever the avowed object and intention of the association is, I am convinced that the future intended for it is political, and that its existence is likely to prove inimical to both the interests of Government and the people. The District and General Council provide for the people of that area all the influence and representation … that they should possess.’

41 Cape Official Papers, A 1–1903, Report of the Select Committee on the Glen Grey Act, appendix, ‘Minutes of Meeting of Transkei General Council… 28 February 1903’, xii.

42 CA, NA 527/A510 for this correspondence.

43 Ibid., Mamba to C. C. Silberbauer, MLA, 27 October 1902.

44 Report of SC on Glen Grey Act, 32.

45 Ibid., 11–36; SANAC, ii, 1032–48.

46 CA, CMT 3/99, RM Idutywa to CMT, 8 September 1896.

47 CA, CMT 3/102, Mamba to RM Idutywa, 4 December 1903; NA 675 File B2552.

48 Although his opposition to these was not indiscriminate – see SANAC, ii, 1034–5.

49 CA, Series i/IDW(Corr. of RM Idutywa), vol. ii, E. Mamba to USNA, 5 July 1912; RM Idutywa to CMT, 24 July 1912.

50 According to Mamba, this was because the incumbent teacher was drunk and incompetent, and because his own followers were mainly Anglicans. Lennard said that Mamba's estrangement from the school stemmed from his cohabitation with a young woman who had been expelled from the Methodist Church for ‘immorality’ and dismissed as assistant teacher. The documentation for this case, including the depositions of witnesses before the Inquiry, is in CA, CMT 3/579, and all the quotations which follow in this and the next paragraph are from this source.

51 Transkeian Territories General Council, Report… of Proceedings for 1909 Session, xix.

52 TTGC, Report… of Proceedings for 1912 Session, 52.Google Scholar

53 For brief biographies of Jabavu, Rubusana and Soga see From Protest to Challenge (ed. T. Karis and G. M. Carter), Volume 4, Gerhart, G. M. and Karis, T. (eds), Political Profiles 1882–1964 (Stanford, 1977), 41–3, 134–5, 149–50.Google Scholar

54 SANAC, ii, 1041.

55 CA, Government House series, GH 35/85, minute encl. in W. Hely-Hutcheson to Earl of Elgin, 5 June 1905.

56 I am indebted for this last detail to William Beinart. For the Wilhelmsthal incident see his ‘Cape Workers in German South-West Africa, 1904–1912’ (University of London, Institute of Commonwealth Studies Seminar Paper SSA/79/12).

57 Imvo Zabantsundu, 21 September 1909; the translation from the Xhosa is by an African clerk in the SNA office.

58 Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth, 1968), 13.Google Scholar

59 Walshe, P., The Rise of African Nationalism in South Africa (Berkeley, 1971), 4.Google Scholar

60 Jagger Library, University of Cape Town, Stanford Papers, Diary, Vol. 39, 8 March 1909. (I am grateful to André Odendaal for directing me to this entry. My discussion of the SANC also benefited from his research on this and other African organizations in the years immediately prior to Union.)