Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

‘The people get fenced’: gender, rehabilitation and African nationalism in the Ciskei and border region, 1945–1955

1992; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 18; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03057079208708337

1465-3893

Anne Mager,

African studies and sociopolitical issues

At dawn on 9 June 1952 residents of Ngwabeni Fingo location in Victoria East were awakened by the shrill blowing of a whistle. Men armed with sticks gathered outside the headman's hut. 'Go with us', they demanded of the man who had accepted Rehabilitation and 'ask the Trust why they are working there'. Seizing the elderly headman, thirty men his son among them marched him in the direction of the new fence. Followed by his third wife and her screaming daughters, the headman was dragged several kilometres across the location. 'Go and fight', ululating women waving red flags exhorted the band of men. 'It does not matter if you die because your land has already been sold.'2 As they approached the fencing party, the men took off their coats, wound them around their right hands and gripped their sticks. The women disappeared into the veld. During the battle that followed, the headman was battered by the location residents, several of whom were wounded by the shots of a white overseer as he fled down the road towards Alice. Along with the majority of the community, their legal counsel (W.M. Tsotsi of the All African Convention) claimed the incident as a victory.3 It demonstrated their opposition to Rehabilitation, their contempt for the collaborating headman and the tenacity of men and women in routing the Native Trust and ridding themselves of fences. In resisting enclosure and in acting in gendered unison, these women and men were typical of countless others engaged in intense but parochial struggles against the state's Rehabilitation measures. Opposition was frequently spearheaded by cattle owners; women whose livelihood depended on men with cattle, often lent their support. 'Progressive' headmen, like some intellectuals and students at nearby Fort Hare, tended to ignore the political nature of Rehabilitation at least until