State, Power and Gender: Conflict over the Registration of African Customary Marriage in South Africa c. 1910–1970

Since the 1920s, the South African Department of Native Affairs (later Bantu Administration and Development) repeatedly prevaricated about instituting a compulsory national register for African customary marriages, despite having compelling strategic and moral reasons to do so and strong support in some powerful quarters. Even at the zenith of its power in the 1960s, poised for a newly aggressive onslaught on the lives of African people, the Department of Bantu Administration and Development was unusually diffident about creating such a marriage register. This paper uses a case study of these recurring vacillations within the state over registering customary marriages, to illustrate some of the inscriptions of gender in political power. It shows too, that their effects were uneven and contradictory. Struggles over whether or not to create the register included, in fundamental ways, debates about the meaning of ‘patriarchy’ and the manner of the state's powers as its custodian.