borislvin

These were some of the opinions I took with me, as background to my training in anthropology, when I began my study of the modem political and social systems of Zululand in 1936. I had behoved that chiefs were oppressive and unrepresentative of their people. I soon collected data that corrected this opinion for the Zulu chiefs, whom in my first analysis, written in the field for African Political Systems (edited by Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, 1940), I saw as contraposed absolutely as representatives of their people against South African government officials. I saw this situation of chief versus native commissioner as set in the hostility of the color groups, with Africans subordinate, for the discussions I heard among Zulu confirmed the early impressions I had formed in Johannesburg. I did not send this first analysis, written in terms of a series of hatreds and oppositions, to Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, for after reading it through, I asked myself: "How is it that people. Black and White, go about their business so easily, relatively peacefully, and accommodatingly, despite these hatreds and hostilities?" And I remembered that they had done so in Johannesburg, despite clashes and oppression. Therefore I sought for, and found, bases of "cohesion." The South African social system was then, and has become increasingly, a horrible one, morally. But it worked and works, in total and in its parts.

Max Gluckman "Tribal Area in South and Central Africa"
("Pluralism in Africa" (Edited by Leo Kuper and M. G. Smith) University of Caiifornia Press. 1971, p.p. 374-375)

https://archive.org/details/isbn_520018729
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Gluckman