ABSTRACT

It is well acknowledged that most African cities are inheritors of colonial systems of administration, legislation, policy and plans. In most of them, this inheritance has not changed, even though it is several decades after gaining independence. As a result, many scholars have tended to overemphasize the influence of the colonizers, precluding an analysis of the ability of indigenous populations to resist, reimagine and remake colonial visions of urban life. Invariably, customary tenure and traditional authority have been treated with some ambivalence in the literature on land in Africa and are often seen respectively as unregulated capital or associated with colonial repression holding back the ability of poor people to prosper. Based on archival and desktop research, this paper examines the ways in which indigenous expressions of urban life have both subverted and been subverted by the British colonial project in Eswatini since the colonial period. The paper argues that while many of the categories and divisions of (settler) colonial rule are still visible in Eswatini, the Swazis have engaged neo-customary practices through kukhonta system centred on the role of the chiefs to reimagine and remake urban life.

摘要

众所周知，大多数非洲城市都是殖民管理、立法、政策和计划制度的继承者。在他们中的大多数人中，这种传承并没有改变，即使是在获得独立几十年后。因此，许多学者倾向于过分强调殖民者的影响，排除对土著居民抵抗、重新构想和重塑城市生活的殖民愿景的能力的分析。在有关非洲土地的文献中，习惯性保有权和传统权威总是受到一些矛盾的对待，通常分别被视为不受管制的资本或与阻碍穷人繁荣的殖民镇压有关。基于档案和桌面研究，本文考察了自殖民时期以来，英国在埃斯瓦蒂尼的殖民计划颠覆和颠覆了城市生活的土著表达方式。该论文认为，虽然（定居者）殖民统治的许多类别和划分在埃斯瓦蒂尼仍然可见，但斯威士人已经通过以酋长角色重新构想和改造城市生活为中心的 kukhonta 系统参与了新习惯做法。