“Zululand, having been conquered by us, really belongs to Her Majesty the Queen, but as an act of grace to the Zulu people, she has now parcelled out the country into independent chieftainships. It is for her officers, on her behalf, to decide the extent of territory that is by her favour to be allotted to each Chief. This was a right freely exercised by Cetshwayo, as well as by his predecessors, and it is that right which devolves upon the Great Queen by right of conquest, and that must not be disputed.”
These are the words of General Garnet Wolseley, the governor of Natal, requesting the boundary committee to transmit them to the 13 Zulu chiefs selected and appointed by the British after King Cetshwayo's exile on August 31 1879.
Though the British had previously been successful in excising Zulu lands through the 1846 Land Boundary Committee and the 1864 establishment of the Natal Native Trust, the social and cultural formation of Zulu communities had remained largely undisturbed and linked to direct, harmonious relations with the land. The region's abundant physical and natural resources nurtured practices through which each homestead was materially self-sufficient and dependent entirely on the products of their labour for food, basic materials and the instruments of production.
However, King Cetshwayo's exile ushered in a new era of conquest. All Zulu lands were placed under the administration of the Natal Native Trust, new traditional leadership structures were imposed and capitalist production intensified, which together dislocated and reconfigured the historic social formations.
The promulgation of the Ingonyama Trust Act in 1994 and subsequent establishment of the Ingonyama Trust Board (ITB) neither challenged nor dismantled the paradigms and practices established by the Native Trust tenure systems established to hold land in trust for traditional communities on behalf of the English monarch. The Ingonyama Trust Act sought to transfer this land to the Ingonyama (Zulu king), absent of substantive changes.
Though the land is held in trust for the material benefit and social wellbeing of the members of the traditional communities, and while the act aims to protect the land rights of beneficiaries, the practice is different.
The ITB adopted a disbursement policy in 2015, according to which 75% of the revenue generated by the Ingonyama Trust should be reserved for the traditional community from which the funds come. Ten percent was allocated to the traditional leader of that community, 10% to the administration of the ITB and the remaining 5% was reserved for the trustee to serve communities without sufficient resources. The ITB, however, has historically presided over systemic violations of the policy and the real land rights of beneficiaries, while drawing on the trust to fund the personal needs of the royal household.
Contemplating the roles, duties and relevance of the trust separately from the personal needs of the royal household encourages objective and more general considerations of the relevance of trust tenure systems for restoring the dignity impugned by sustained land dispossession
The battles for control of the ITB present an opportunity to reconsider the role of trust tenure systems across South Africa in the context of the continued reliance, post-1994, on colonial and apartheid-derived approaches.
At least three main considerations should inform sustainable solutions to the Ingonyama Trust and the ITB challenges:
- First, given the continued violations of the customary land rights of traditional communities, a land titling system must be developed to address insecure land tenure and heal the wounds of historic land dispossession.
- Second, King Misuzulu kaZwelithini has requested that the province host an urgent climate-change summit. The traditional communities of KwaZulu-Natal, having a history of organic and egalitarian relationships with land, are best placed to lead the development of sustainable solutions to climate change, and must lead this summit.
- Lastly, given that the Human Sciences Research Council recently revealed that KwaZulu-Natal faces significant food insecurity, the ITB must ensure that a substantial portion of the 75% of revenue reserved for traditional communities is invested in promoting agricultural productivity. This has the potential to dismantle dependency, promote food sovereignty and slowly reverse the rapid pace of urban migration.
The effective application of the above three pillars requires a separation of the personal affairs and needs of the Zulu royal household from the fiduciary requirements of the trust.
Contemplating the roles, duties and relevance of the trust separately from the personal needs of the royal household encourages objective and more general considerations of the relevance of trust tenure systems for restoring the dignity impugned by sustained land dispossession.
As the more prominent reminder of conquest through trust tenure systems, the Ingonyama Trust is best placed to lead the development of a national land tenure system that revisits the organic, self-sustaining social formations of traditional communities, explores localised and indigenous responses to climate injustices, reverses rapid urban migration, promotes food sovereignty and effectively heals the wounds of colonial conquest.
• Ntuli is a commissioner of the SA Human Rights Commission. She is responsible for land reform, food sovereignty and the national preventive mechanism
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