Chiefs in South Africa

Barbara Oomen is Assistant Professor of Law at Leiden University.

• Introduction: reawakenings - The patchwork democracy: boundary politics after 1994 - The power of definition: struggling for the soul of custom - Sekhukhune: the institutional landscape - 'Walking in the middle of the road': people's perspectives on the legitimacy of traditional leadership - Negotiated laws, relational rights... power, authority, and the creation of local law - Conclusion: categories have consequences, the constitutive effects of cultural rights legislation - Select Bibliography.

There is no doubt that it is a book of major importance which will be widely influential and cited. Using the apparently paradoxical case of the new importance and influence of African traditional authorities in South Africa, she presents an argument for this being a local example of global trends towards localisation, authenticity, culture, pluralism, etc. At the same time she demonstrates clearly that it is more than merely an imposition of fashionable ideas on local realities. Making use of her re-iterated question of who chooses what is customary and authentic, she shows the involvement not only of chiefs themselves, and of government anthropologists, and of ANC politicians, but also of many different interests locally. - , Emeritus Rhodes Professor of Race Relations, University of Oxford