Bantu Authorities

Abstract

In Bantu Authorities: Apartheid's System of Race and Ethnicity, Veronica Ehrenreich-Risner provides the first holistic study of the Bantu Authorities (BA) system that implemented rural apartheid. The system extended segregation by including ethnos theory to establish underfunded “self-governing” homelands to curb the expense of “native” administration yet retain control of the cheap labor upon which white capital depended. Based on over sixty interviews with Zulus and former commissioners, and archival research, Bantu Authorities proves the primary objective of the system was to protect white capital, with white racial purity secondary. Ehrenreich-Risner argues that the system disrupted the Brownlee tradition of guardianship for commissioners and the tradition of reciprocity for ubukhosi. Bantu Authorities ends by examining the lingering consequences of rural apartheid and asks what rural Africans have gained with majority rule when they remain bound to BA structures.