Nkoya royal chiefs and the Kazanga Cultural Association in western central Zambia today : resilience, decline, or folklorisation?

TitleNkoya royal chiefs and the Kazanga Cultural Association in western central Zambia today : resilience, decline, or folklorisation?
Publication TypeBook Chapter
Year of Publication1999
AuthorsW.M.J. van Binsbergen
EditorE.A.B. van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal, and R.A. van Dijk
Secondary TitleAfrican chieftaincy in a new socio-political landscape
Pagination97 - 133
Date Published1999///
PublisherLit Verlag
Place PublishedHamburg
Publication Languageeng
Keywordschieftaincy, NGO, Nkoya, political change, politics, Subsaharan Africa, Zambia
Abstract

The author first traces the successive approaches to African chieftaincy in the course of the 20th century, contrasting the dualistic and the transactionalist models. He then examines the thesis of the resilient chief by considering a case from western central Zambia. He shows that the power base of local chiefs and their room for manouvring is weakening and that the chiefs are experimenting with new strategies in order to survive. They are driven into the arms of new actors on the local scene, against whom they are rather defenceless. One such new actor is an ethnic voluntary organization, the Kazanga Cultural Association. This NGO has been amazingly successful in bridging indigenous politics and the State in a process of ethnicization. Gradually, the revival of chieftainship which this NGO has brought about, is turning out to lead not to resilience but to impotent folklorization. Chiefs who are unable to link their symbolic capital - their ceremonial functions - to the experimental worlds of the urbanites, find themselves locked into a position of declining significance. Bibliogr., notes, ref

IR handle/ Full text URLhttp://hdl.handle.net/1887/9669
Citation Key1533