The extension of chieftaincy's legal foundation during the 1920s makes clear the presumption on the part of South Africa's segregationist leaders that indirect rule was far more than a temporary colonial expedient. Yet, during the first half of the twentieth century, as the forces of modernity increasingly transformed the whole of South African society, the institutions of indirect rule came under mounting pressure. As industrialization drove the relocation of workers from rural villages to urban townships and industrial sites, even heavily modified versions of tribal social organization were strained to the breaking point. As electoral democracy gradually shifted its international status from radical working class demand to accepted bourgeois practice, both government officials and popular opposition leaders began to question the maintenance of hereditary chieftaincy. By the middle 1940s, South Africa seemed to face a critical juncture. One path led toward modernization and deracialization; another toward the desperate defense of segregation and the reinvigoration of indirect rule.

Elaboration and Expansion

The segregationist strategy of “differentiation” became law with the passage of the 1927 Native Administration Act. Under the act, the category of “Native” was defined to include, “any person who is a member of any aboriginal race or tribe of Africa,” though as in other applications of indirect rule and customary law, the state retained the ability to exempt a person legally defined as a Native from “the laws specially affecting Natives.”