Tradition, Authority and Power (TAP)

Tradition, Authority and Power (TAP) is a research project led by Jeff Guy and run from the Campbell Collections.

While concerned with the broad context in which tradition interacts with the formal exercise of authority and the informal creation power, the TAP research project's focus is on the way in which the pasts interacts with present in KwaZulu-Natal, and looks specifically at the debates around the foundations and workings of chieftanship in a constitutional democracy.

Jeff Guy is at present looking again at Theophilus Shepstone, the man, his policies and his legacy, and hopes to find material to include the views of the Africans with and against whom he worked. Eva Jackson and Percy Ngonyama are researchers in the project, and beginning their postgraduate work in History.

We meet on Wednesday mornings for a Workshop on our work, and the work of others, which relates to our research interests.