“… They Say that they do not know this Disease”: Epidemic Influenza in Rural Natal, 1918–1919

Abstract

This article explores the politics of disease in Natal in the context of the escalating fears and traumatic experiences associated with the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918-19. I focus on local African experiences and responses to the epidemic, relating them to official and popular white discourses about the imagined and actual manifestations of the disease. My focus is the areas administered by the Native Affairs Department and I draw on correspondence between the Chief Native Commissioner (CNC) and rural magistrates in Natal from the period of 1918 to 1919. This correspondence took the form of letters, statistical reports and telegrams addressing the subject of epidemic influenza. There are obviously some problems entailed with this reliance on documentation overwhelmingly containing the voices and views of almost exclusively white administrators less than a decade since the end of British colonial rule. Thankfully, the material I use is generally very rich, and I believe that a critical awareness of the limitations of the ethnocentric nature of such records allows us to make carefully considered arguments productive to historical analysis. I hope to convey a sense of the complexity and variety of African experiences and responses during the epidemic.