The Business of Being Bafokeng

In this essay I explore the tensions and contradictions inherent in the Royal Bafokeng Nation’s status as both community and corporation. As one of South Africa’s approximately 750 traditional communities, the Royal Bafokeng Nation is on the one hand part of a modern parliamentary democracy governed by a liberal constitution and on the other a traditionally governed patriarchy that preserves hereditary rule and communal forms of land tenure. As a corporatizing entity, the Royal Bafokeng Nation is also one of South Africa’s largest community-based investment companies, and it channels revenue derived from mineral deposits into a broad investment portfolio that in turn funds an aggressive social-development program. The legal, financial, and social tensions that arise when an ethnically based polity seeks to maximize its financial standing by becoming a player on the global commodities stage are the focus of this article. Rather than hindering its prospects for commercial success, the traditional elements of the Royal Bafokeng Nation—in both a legal sense and a cultural sense—are arguably the keys to its prosperity, now and in the future.