KwaZulu-Natal's name and its role in South Africa's reconciliation journey

NAMES are never neutral. They carry issues of power, hierarchy and memory, often persisting long after the systems that created them have officially ended. In South Africa, provincial naming has primarily been viewed as a form of cultural recognition or symbolic redress.

However, in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), the provincial name acts less as a site of reconciliation and more as an unresolved point of dominance, a site that continues to erase history, hide dispossession, and legally cement a specific political narrative.

For many non-ethnic Zulu people in the former British Colony of Natal, including AmaHlubi, AmaBhaca, AmaThonga, AmaNgwane, Batlôkwa, Ntlangwini, AmaXesibe and many others, the name “KwaZulu” does not signify dignity or cultural affirmation. It signifies historical compression. Their diverse identities, political histories and systems of authority were not simply marginalised. But they were actively submerged beneath a singular ethnic frame that was constructed and enforced through colonial and apartheid governance.

The widespread claim that colonial Natal neatly matched a pre-colonial Kingdom of the AmaZulu is central to this erasure. It relies on a selective and often fictionalised interpretation of Shaka’s conquests, retroactively applying modern territorial sovereignty to fluid pre-colonial political structures. This narrative performs significant political work: it naturalises the idea that KwaZulu is an ancient, continuous territorial entity rather than a twentieth-century administrative construct.

What this story obscures is that the most profound dispossessions experienced by many communities in Natal did not happen in the nineteenth century, but in the 1970s, with the creation and consolidation of the KwaZulu Bantustan. Under apartheid, geography was weaponised. Ethnicity was turned into an administrative tool. Diverse communities were merged into a homogenised Zulu identity (megatribe logic) to strengthen power, suppress dissent, and fracture broader African solidarity.

At the centre of this project was the late Mangosuthu Buthelezi. The KwaZulu Bantustan was not just administered by him; it also served as the institutional backbone of his authority and purposeful conflation of history. Through a strict system of ethnic governance, political dissidents and non-conforming communities were disciplined through territorial control, violence and enforced belonging. The Bantustan reduced Natal’s diverse social landscape to a singular Zulu polity, not as cultural recognition but as a means of political control on behalf of the brutal apartheid state.

This is precisely the context in which the Nhlapo Commission was established. Its intervention in KZN was not intended to celebrate ethnic heritage but to untangle the domination logic embedded by colonial and apartheid-era engineering. The commission was tasked with investigating whether groups such as the AmaHlubi, Ba ha Molefe and AmaThonga were legitimate, independent traditional entities or whether they were rightfully subjects of the Zulu monarch. Properly understood, this was a transitional justice exercise; an attempt to restore dignity to histories deliberately submerged.

The commission started its work in 2004, during a politically sensitive period. South Africa was emerging from the violent conflicts of the 1990s, especially in KZN, and the ANC leadership focused on stability above all else. During this time, many communities, including the AmaHlubi, officially submitted historical, oral and archival evidence. Their argument was clear: The post-1994 democratic order should not merely inherit the borders, hierarchies and ethnic monopolies of the Bantustan system, but should mirror the diverse pre-colonial reality of Natal.

Yet when the commission released its findings regarding the Zulu kingship in 2010, transitional justice gave way to political expediency. The ruling recognised only one legitimate kingship in the province; that of the AmaZulu. Claims by the AmaHlubi and others were dismissed. The effect was profound. Rather than dismantling apartheid-era ethnic engineering, the decision effectively rubber-stamped the Bantustan settlement, transforming a system of imposed domination into a post-apartheid legal reality.

This outcome is broadly seen as a political “fudge”. Faced with the risk of upsetting the Zulu monarchy, still strongly influenced by Buthelezi, the ANC chose to appease. Stability was valued over historical accuracy. The result was not reconciliation but the cementing of a singular provincial identity that silenced minority histories and justified the administrative violence of the past.

Unsurprisingly, the legal aftermath has been lengthy. Starting in 2011, the AmaHlubi Royal Council initiated court reviews to overturn the commission’s findings. The case became a protracted process of procedural delays, technical obstacles, and changing legislative frameworks. Throughout, the state defended the commission’s decision, contending that the AmaHlubi did not satisfy the statutory criteria for kingship under the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act.

The AmaHlubi argued that this reasoning simply reproduced the very logic under scrutiny. They maintained that their independent sovereignty had been unlawfully taken away by the British in 1873, and that the commission depended heavily on colonial-era ethnographies, the same classificatory tools used to justify dispossession. to endorse a singular Zulu hegemony. Far from addressing historical injustice, the process merely re-inscribed it into constitutional form.

As recently as last year, the courts have largely upheld the status quo. The practical consequence is clear: the weaponisation of geography remains embedded in law. Non-ethnic Zulu communities continue to be administratively submerged within the “Zulu Kingdom”, not through consent, but due to inherited legal structures. The post-apartheid state has indirectly nurtured toxic Zulu nationalism that is frequently launched against anyone who seeks justice, including AmaHlubi.

This legal reality exposes the deeper problem with KwaZulu-Natal’s name. The call for reconsideration is not driven by symbolism or cultural antagonism. It is about confronting a domination logic that survived the transition intact. Naming the province KwaZulu-Natal did not heal historical wounds: It legitimised a particular political settlement rooted in Bantustan power. For many African communities in the province, both KwaZulu and Natal represent historical and ongoing oppression.

History is important and not a myth. It should guide decisions, not be used selectively to justify inherited hierarchies. Transitional justice is not just about truth commissions or constitutional laws. It also involves how places are named, managed and remembered. When some names support systems of exclusion, they need to be reconsidered. KZN needs to learn from an equally diverse Limpopo, with a name that is neutral and does not perpetuate “mfecanism” and Bantustanism.

Reopening the question of KwaZulu-Natal’s name would not weaken social cohesion if it follows the megatribe reasoning that apartheid developed as part of its “divide-and-rule tactic”. It would recognise that reconciliation without addressing underlying issues is fragile.

South Africa’s democracy cannot be built on the quiet normalisation of apartheid’s ethnic map. Until that map is challenged legally, politically, and symbolically, the promise of equal citizenship will remain unfulfilled.

The unresolved demand for a name change is therefore not a distraction but a reminder that deferred transitional justice becomes persistent injustice.

Siyayibanga le economy!

* Siyabonga Hadebe is an independent commentator based in Geneva on socio-economic, political and global matters.

** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media, or IOL.

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