Olaf Zenker

Autochthony, ethnicity, indigeneity and nationalism: time-honouring and state-oriented modes of rooting individual-territory-group triads in a globalizing world

Recently, proliferating discourses on autochthony and indigeneity have been noted as the flip-side of globalization. Against this backdrop, this article synthesizes insights from studies of nationalism and research on autochthony, explaining how identity formations literally ‘take place’ by conceptualizing ‘autochthony’ — the proclaimed ‘original’ link between individual, territory and group — as the root phenomenon. Two causal logics underlying this autochthonous ethnicity are distinguished, which honour time differently: ‘individualized autochthony’ links the individual, territory and group in such a way that shared culture/descent follow from place of birth/residence within the same present, whereas ‘collectivized autochthony’ inverts this causality on the basis of continuously evoking the same past. The article concludes by distinguishing between ‘indigeneity’ and ‘nationalism’ as alternative modes for targeting the state: whereas indigeneity refers to cases of autochthony that demand special entitlements from the state, nationalism denotes such cases that aim for the very entitlement of the state itself.

Transition and justice : negotiating the terms of new beginnings in Africa

Transition and Justice examines a series of cases from across the African continent where peaceful ‘new beginnings’ were declared after periods of violence and where transitional justice institutions helped define justice and the new socio-political order. Offers a new perspective on transition and justice in Africa transcending the institutional limits of transitional justice Covers a wide range of situations, and presents a broad range of sites where past injustices are addressed Examines cases where peaceful ‘new beginnings’ have been declared after periods of violence Addresses fundamental questions about transitions and justice in societies characterized by a high degree of external involvement and internal fragmentation

Anthropology on trial: exploring the laws of anthropological expertise

This paper explores the role of anthropological expertise in shaping the outcome of legal proceedings under conditions of cultural diversity. Taking the state-driven land-restitution process in post-apartheid South Africa as its point of reference, the text reflects upon the work of anthropological experts in a number of cases and shows how their theoretical and political stances shaped the trajectories of their legal engagements. Pointing towards frictions that emerge in acts of translation between the seemingly objectivist rhetoric evoked in court and more relativist and subjectivist stances within the academy, the paper revisits and problematises debates around strategic essentialism. Sketching instead the contours of a ‘recursive anthropology’ that expresses itself in terms of a post-positivist universalism, the paper turns on the authors use of his own expertise in support of a White land claim, probing – and critically reflecting upon – the practical potential of a form of expertise grounded in such a recursive anthropology.

South African land restitution, white claimants and the fateful frontier of former KwaNdebele

South African land restitution, through which the post-apartheid state compensates victims of racial land dispossession, has been intimately linked to former homelands: prototypical rural claims are those of communities that lost their rights in land when being forcibly relocated to reserves, and they now aspire to return to their former homes and lands from their despised ‘homelands’. However, white farmers, who were also dispossessed (although usually compensated) by the apartheid state in its endeavour to consolidate existing homelands, have lodged restitution claims as well. While the Land Claims Court has principally admitted such restitution claims and ruled upon the merits of individual cases, state bureaucrats, legal activists, and other members of the public have categorically questioned and challenged such claims to land rights by whites. Focusing on white land claimaints affected by the consolidation of former KwaNdebele, this article investigates the contested field of moral entitlements emerging from divergent discourses about the true victims and beneficiaries of apartheid. It pays particular attention to land claims pertaining to the western frontier of KwaNdebele – the wider Rust de Winter area, which used to be white farmland expropriated in the mid-1980s for consolidation (which never occurred) and currently vegetates as largely neglected no-mans-(state-)land under multiple land claims. Being the point of reference for state officials, former white farmers, Ndebele traditionalists, local residents, and other citizens and subjects, this homeland frontier is hence analysed as a fateful zone of contestation, in which the terms of a new South African moral community are negotiated.

From Identification to Framing and Alignment: A New Approach to the Comparative Analysis of Collective Identities

We present a comprehensive framework for the comparative analysis of collective identities and corresponding processes of identification, framing, and alignment. Collective identities are defined as activated categories of likeness, distinction, and solidarity, located within any one of a number of possible frames (e.g., nationality, religion, and gender) and aligned series (e.g., national, regional, or local categories of identification). Emphasis falls on the dynamics of identification, framing, and alignment within limits that are cognitive or semantic, on one hand, and social, economic, political, or legal, on the other. Specifying the limits within which identification, framing, and alignment may vary allows us to elide sterile debates about whether collective identities are invariable or variable and to focus instead on variation in the relative frequency, typical duration, and degree of ease or difficulty of acts of identification corresponding to distinguishable types. Such dynamics are examined with reference to codeterminants of identification: situations, circumstances, and actors’ motives. In conclusion, we reflect on the qualitative and quantitative consequences of variable forms of identification in collective action. Multiple examples illustrate the utility of the framework for comparative analysis.

Homelands as Frontiers: Apartheid's Loose Ends – An Introduction

In this Introduction we discuss the apparent erasure of the homelands from the social imagination of post-apartheid South Africa. We ask what has become of the homelands and reflect on the lives of those millions that still inhabit former homeland areas. In order to explore this, we tentatively evoke and develop the terms ‘frontier’ and ‘the loose ends of apartheid’. We understand the concept of the frontier not as margin or the end; rather the homelands as frontier should be understood not as a stage of the past, but as intense zones of contestation, where the future of post-apartheid South Africa will, in part, be determined. ‘Loose ends’ refers to the many unresolved questions that are being negotiated in these zones of contestation. This Introduction falls into three parts. First, through a brief historical analysis, we depart from what we, drawing on Cherryl Walker, call the master narrative of loss and restoration, in which ‘homelands’ signalled loss and ‘post-apartheid’ a restoration. Secondly, we turn to some of the policy initiatives taken to erase the homeland past, which, ironically, often reproduced them. Third, through the different contributions, we account for the great variety of life and loose ends in the homelands today. It is our contention that only through addressing the loose ends in their complexity and ambiguity can we hope to address the legacies of the homelands in a way that may pave the way to different futures.