A Blood-Stained Tax: Poll Tax and the Bambatha Rebellion in South Africa

The Bambatha Revolt in South Africa is one of the most often cited rebel- lions against taxation in colonial Africa. Most discussions of the revolt have empha- sized its material and political causes: the added costs of the new tax and the diffi- culty African farmers had in finding the cash to pay it; long-standing grievances between white settlers and Africans over control of the best farm and grazing land in Natal and Zululand; and generalized unrest among the African population caused by colonial policies and by social and economic circumstances. This article underlines that these were all real concerns for Africans and predisposed at least some of the population to act violently when the new poll tax was first collected in 1906. However, material grievances alone do not supply a complete explanation for the revolt, and there were additional causes linked to spiritual beliefs held by many Africans at the time of the rebellion. Africans resisted the poll tax in part because they feared that the state had acquired more potentially destructive power over them via the census that preceded the tax. Based on rumors that reportedly circulated prior to the rebellion, many Africans attributed their misfortune at the hands of the colonial state to their ancestors' having turned their backs on them; and people fully expected a coming thunderstorm to punish them severely for their neglect. One way of placating the ancestors and of undermining the power of the colonial state was through active participation in the rebellion. Moreover, rebels were not merely reacting to state actions; they were acting in accordance with their own belief systems that suggested that the ancestors strongly supported their resistance and would allow them to prevail. Thus, the Bambatha revolt was not, as other historians have sug- gested, a last-ditch, hopeless attempt to strike a blow against the colonial state and die; rather, it was an armed revolt that was seriously intended to overthrow the colo- nial state both by force of arms and by the power of supernatural actors.