Relevance of - United Nations Economic Commission for Africa

to allow the establishment and free operation of opposition parties, such as Uganda and
Zimbabwe, have taken measures to reinstate and to integrate chiefs into their governance
structure.
The modalities of integrating chiefs into the modern system of governance vary across
countries but the most common form has been the creation of an upper house (house of
chiefs) in parliament with a largely advisory role. The Council of Traditional Leaders in
Namibia, for instance, is an organ that advises the President, mostly on matters of utilizing
communal land. Ghana’s House of Chiefs is also charged with advising any authority
under the constitution on matters related to chieftaincy and customary law. Zimbabwe
reversed its earlier policy of dismantling chieftaincy and created a Council of Chiefs in
1993. The House of Chiefs was restored in Zambia in 1996. In Lesotho and Malawi,
chiefs constitute two-thirds and 30 per cent of the Senate respectively. South Africa’s
1996 constitution provides for the creation of provincial and national houses of traditional
leaders. The Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (CONTRALESA) has,
however, complained that the National House of Traditional Leaders is merely symbolic
and does not give traditional leaders a substantive role (Bank and Southall, 1996).
CONTRALESA’s concerns are however valid, since the existing mechanisms of
integration limit chiefs to a largely advisory role. The extent to which policy makers take
the advice of chiefs seriously is also unclear. It is possible that the houses of chiefs are
designed largely to appease chiefs and to manipulate them into supporting the political
leaders. In any case, the mechanisms merely incorporate the upper echelons of chiefs
without integrating the traditional democratic values or the leaders at the grassroots level.
This approach is not very likely to lead to a dynamic harmonization of the fragmented
governance structures of African countries. A new and more holistic incorporation
of traditional institutions, including lower-level chiefs and headmen and the relevant
aspects of customary laws and political values would be more effective. Botswana, which
has maintained an upper house of chiefs since 1965, has taken steps in this direction.
It has maintained the traditional courts, with chiefs performing judicial duties. An
approach which combines advisory and judiciary roles for traditional authorities and
builds on democratic traditional political values and customary laws is likely to be more
successful.
6. Future direction of research and aims of the project
As stated at the outset, African traditional institutions are understudied and misunderstood.
This section attempts to highlight some key gaps in the existing literature on traditional
institutions.
6.1. New typology of traditional institutions
As already noted, the literature categorizes traditional institutions into chieftaincy under
the centralized political systems and the consensual systems of the decentralized political
areas. Unfortunately, this broad classification has masked critical differences within each
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