A woman has finally succeeded her father as hosi after a legal battle, writes KARIN BRULLIARDin Nwamitwa, South Africa
THERE WAS nothing remarkable about the case before Hosi Nwamitwa II, chief of the Valoyi tribe that lives in the lush hills of Nwamitwa. A villager said his brother’s wife had failed to show up for a hearing on an accusation that she insulted neighbours. The woman pleaded guilty and was fined $30 and the case was closed.
What was unusual was the person mediating the dispute. For only the second such court session to date, the chief – whose father, grandfather and great-grandfather had also led the Valoyi – was a woman.
“This insulting must come to an end,” Phyllia Tinyiko Nwamitwa (69), wearing a beaded headband, gently told the defendant one recent morning. “You are from the same family.”
Nwamitwa knows something about family feuds. Last year, her six-year battle with a cousin went to South Africa’s top court. The cousin said the 70,000-member tribe’s tradition of male leadership gave him the right to be hosi, or chief. The court disagreed, citing the Valoyi royal family’s decision to give Nwamitwa the throne and she assumed the job full-time last month.
The ruling has made Nwamitwa a phenomenon. Her case has become required reading for students on the clashes between tribal customs and democracy.
Women’s rights activists hailed it as a victory over patriarchal traditions. Constitutional-law scholars described the decision as a “huge, huge” development, as the University of Cape Town’s Thomas Bennett put it.
Nwamitwa reacts to all this mostly with modesty. She says her inauguration last summer, which drew scores of villagers, dancers and dignitaries, “was okay,” if overwhelming. Nevertheless, she says quietly over tea and egg-and- tomato sandwiches in her office, “that was a breakthrough case. A case that was a leverage to all the women of South Africa, even abroad”.
Nwamitwa, a keen gardener who reads the newspaper to relax, is one of the very few women among South Africa’s 750 or so traditional leaders. A tiny number of tribes pass authority from mother to daughter, and some women lead as placeholders for underage sons. But the dominant succession tradition, written into law by colonial governments in many African nations, is from father to first-born son.
That became a problem for the Valoyi in 1968, when Nwamitwa’s father died without a male heir.
It was inconceivable at the time that a woman would take the job, so it went to his brother, Richard.
However, after South Africa moved from the racist apartheid system to a liberal democracy in 1994 – complete with a constitution guaranteeing equal rights for women – the Valoyi traditional authorities and royal family, including Hosi Richard, declared it only right to restore the throne to its original bloodline and make Nwamitwa the next leader.
That did not go down well with Hosi Richard’s first son, Sidwell Nwamitwa. When Hosi Richard died in 2001, his son went to court, arguing that royal authorities had no right to alter tradition.
Crowning Nwamitwa, he said, would mean that the next chief would not be fathered by a hosi, causing “chaos and confusion in the community”.
For her part, Nwamitwa, by then a retired teacher and member of South Africa’s parliament, argued that she would have become hosi had equal rights existed in 1968 – and, perhaps, if she had lived hundreds of years ago. Generations back, she said, the Valoyi had female chiefs, proving that customs were dynamic.
The constitutional court agreed, knocking down two lower- court decisions. “The decision of the constitutional court was extremely revolutionary and it was also transformational, because it celebrates gender equality in chieftaincy succession disputes,” says Obeng Mireku, dean of the University of Limpopo law school, not far from Nwamitwa town.
If so, the revolution seems to have been quickly absorbed in Valoyi territory, a swath of villages shaded by palms and pines. The battle divided the community, Nwamitwa acknowledges, while in interviews, residents say some resistance to the idea of a female chief lingers.
However, most sound like true believers in equal rights.
“It agrees with the constitution, which we all have to follow,” says a village leader, Rhulani Casswell Baloyi (47), as he pays taxes at the tribe’s administrative office. Besides, he adds, Nwamitwa is intelligent and she succeeded in getting the main road paved.
That praise is echoed by others, including a sceptic.
“It would have been better had it remained the same, it shows that people have neglected their traditions,” says Javu Mpenyisi (26), adding that he thinks the tribe’s ancestors would have disapproved. Even so, “ever since the inauguration, I see things are going really well”.
Nwamitwa, a widow who retires most afternoons to her grand brick house to swap her robes for house dresses and slippers, says her leadership is “not an issue” for most of her subjects.
Among the exceptions, she notes, is her cousin, Sidwell Nwamitwa, whose house is separated from hers by a narrow field.
Sidwell Nwamitwa was supported by the Congress of Traditional Leaders, a lobbying group that casts itself as a guardian of African traditions against western values, which it says dilute valuable customs. She was backed by the group’s primary nemesis, the National Movement for Rural Women.
Nwamitwa hopes to promote women’s rights through a job-and- life-skills training programme and by empowering women to believe they are as capable of leadership as men.
Her top priority though is development for her rural area, where joblessness and Aids rates are high. “Women, generally, they take these issues very seriously,” she says. “You have that mother’s instinct.”
Having retired from parliament in April, these days, the job of hosi is a constant navigation of old and new. "You have many concerns," Nwamitwa says, taking notes and promising to look into speed bumps. "We are getting educated in the new democracy." – ( Los Angeles Times-Washington Postservice)