AfricaBib 
bibliographic database
| Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | 'Zoolacraticism' and 'Cannibalism': A Discussion of Historical Disposition towards the 'Shakan' Model of Social Order and Political Rights |
| Author: | Hamilton, Carolyn A. |
| Year: | 1995 |
| Periodical: | Social Dynamics |
| Volume: | 21 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Period: | Summer |
| Pages: | 1-22 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | political systems traditional rulers Politics and Government Law, Human Rights and Violence Ethnic and Race Relations History and Exploration |
| About person: | Shaka king of Zululand (ca. 1787-1828) |
| External link: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533959508458588 |
| Abstract: | This paper recasts the question of how deep South Africans' traditions of democracy are, firstly, by posing a corollary question: what political traditions and concepts of social order do people in South Africa have? Secondly, the paper challenges the bifurcation of the answer to this question into separate white and black political traditions, or separate precolonial and colonial/apartheid ones. To do this, the paper begins to investigate some of the history of such traditions, or deep habits. It looks at the way in which a tradition's (or elements of a tradition's) own past shapes its present. It looks at the way in which the versions of the past promoted by those in power were shaped by contesting and conflicting versions of the past. Through a focus on a single case, that of the political heritage of the Shakan system - the so-called 'Zoolacratical government' - the author considers the question of to what extent it is a source of the political habits and expectations that are ingrained in the minds of a significant number of South Africans. She argues that appeals to the Shaka legacy are, above all else, expressions of a desire and need for social order, where social order is understood as the alternative to anarchy and violence. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |
