Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1080/02590123.2022.2045056
Jacob Ivey
Abstract In 1860, a case was brought before the court of Pietermaritzburg in the colony of Natal over the illegal possession and sale of guns. What made this case unique was the primary witness against the defendant: an African constable named Budaza. Budaza proudly claimed in his testimony that he had threatened the defendant with his ‘sticks’ during the arrest, despite the constable having misplaced his badge. Though Budaza appears only briefly in the colonial records, his testimony during the trial highlighted his firm belief in his position that transcended the badge he did not possess. Symbols of office like the badge and ‘sticks’ (likely a spear and knobkerrie) were signs of authority within the colonial community, but also representative of an internalised sense of power during this formative period of Natal. When these symbols of leadership and state power were implemented, they revealed a solidified sense of legitimacy granted by the colonial government but also embodied in the attitudes of African policemen. This article will use Budaza’s case to help answer questions of police and colonial power and the notion of indigenous agency in the rural and urban segments of Natal. The interaction between Black police and white settler society will reveal the transitory nature of power in these police institutions and the complicated way these narratives are remembered within the history of KwaZulu-Natal.
{"title":"Badges and ‘Sticks’: Police Power Dynamics and African Agency in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Natal","authors":"Jacob Ivey","doi":"10.1080/02590123.2022.2045056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02590123.2022.2045056","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In 1860, a case was brought before the court of Pietermaritzburg in the colony of Natal over the illegal possession and sale of guns. What made this case unique was the primary witness against the defendant: an African constable named Budaza. Budaza proudly claimed in his testimony that he had threatened the defendant with his ‘sticks’ during the arrest, despite the constable having misplaced his badge. Though Budaza appears only briefly in the colonial records, his testimony during the trial highlighted his firm belief in his position that transcended the badge he did not possess. Symbols of office like the badge and ‘sticks’ (likely a spear and knobkerrie) were signs of authority within the colonial community, but also representative of an internalised sense of power during this formative period of Natal. When these symbols of leadership and state power were implemented, they revealed a solidified sense of legitimacy granted by the colonial government but also embodied in the attitudes of African policemen. This article will use Budaza’s case to help answer questions of police and colonial power and the notion of indigenous agency in the rural and urban segments of Natal. The interaction between Black police and white settler society will reveal the transitory nature of power in these police institutions and the complicated way these narratives are remembered within the history of KwaZulu-Natal.","PeriodicalId":88545,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Natal and Zulu history","volume":"34 1","pages":"84 - 98"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46431617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1080/02590123.2021.1948802
John Wright
Abstract In the period from 1923 to 1926, James Stuart, a former Natal colonial official, produced five readers written in isiZulu for use in Natal’s isiZulu-speaking schools. They were uTulasizwe (1923), uHlangakula (1924), uBaxoxele (1924), uKulumetule (1925) and uVusezakiti (1926). Each consisted of a number of izifundo, or ‘lessons’, on what Stuart would have called Zulu ‘history and custom’. They have generally been seen as Stuart’s own writings, but research into the six published volumes of the James Stuart Archive has led to the development of a quite different picture. It is now clear that many of the izifundo were drawn, often verbatim, from Stuart’s notes on his conversations about the past with specific African interlocutors, who can be named and whose lives, to varying degrees, can be researched. This finding transforms our understanding of the place occupied by Stuart’s readers in the historical literature written in isiZulu. As an aid to further research in this field, this article lists the individual interlocutors whom the author has so far been able to identify.
{"title":"Tracking Down the Sources of James Stuart’s Readers","authors":"John Wright","doi":"10.1080/02590123.2021.1948802","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02590123.2021.1948802","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the period from 1923 to 1926, James Stuart, a former Natal colonial official, produced five readers written in isiZulu for use in Natal’s isiZulu-speaking schools. They were uTulasizwe (1923), uHlangakula (1924), uBaxoxele (1924), uKulumetule (1925) and uVusezakiti (1926). Each consisted of a number of izifundo, or ‘lessons’, on what Stuart would have called Zulu ‘history and custom’. They have generally been seen as Stuart’s own writings, but research into the six published volumes of the James Stuart Archive has led to the development of a quite different picture. It is now clear that many of the izifundo were drawn, often verbatim, from Stuart’s notes on his conversations about the past with specific African interlocutors, who can be named and whose lives, to varying degrees, can be researched. This finding transforms our understanding of the place occupied by Stuart’s readers in the historical literature written in isiZulu. As an aid to further research in this field, this article lists the individual interlocutors whom the author has so far been able to identify.","PeriodicalId":88545,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Natal and Zulu history","volume":"34 1","pages":"36 - 55"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02590123.2021.1948802","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47743045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-01DOI: 10.1080/02590123.2019.1684635
S. Mkhize
In the mid-1980s, I spent a number of years documenting political events unfolding in both the Natal province and the ‘homeland’ of KwaZulu (as the patchwork region of apartheidconstituted territories was then called). The events in question were related to the formation and ongoing activities of a popular movement mobilised around ideas of Zulu cultural tradition, an identity politics represented by its leadership in the terms of ‘nation’; that is, arguing for the primacy of an ethnic national form of subjecthood and belonging. Nation and self-determination were, after all, discourses with legitimacy: struggles over who could sit at the gates guarding, or presiding over, a given ‘peoplehood’ were influencing political confrontations in many other parts of the world. Inmy research, Iwas concerned about a leader’s own ‘appetite for power’, his co-leaders and close followers, and their collective brokering of a politics centred on ethnic ‘Zuluness’ over and apart from a broader ‘South African’ vision of national unification. Yet, I had confidence that people mobilised by Inkathawere not pawns of leadership, nor of a third force (although I did take seriously the power of Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s authority as well as that of armed state intervention). I acknowledged the reality of large numbers of local people seeing themselves, and their own concerns and future, mirrored in the call to local, cultural solidarity, and in the proposals for federalism, aligned to industrial zoning, jobs, the disciplining of youth and the organisationally linked educational curriculum that Buthelezi promoted. That many also did not accept Inkatha’s conception of belonging was also increasingly clear. The stakes proved extremely high. In the violence of the later 1980s and early 1990s, about 18,000 people lost their lives and many more lost family members, their security, homes and property. ‘Ordinary people’ were overwhelmingly affected by this civil war, even as the leadership resolved their differences or shifted in their alliances. The Zulu king, Goodwill Zwelithini, long a stalwart and unifying symbol of Inkatha, switched his allegiance with ANC
{"title":"To Swim with Crocodiles: Land, Violence, and Belonging in South Africa, 1800–1996","authors":"S. Mkhize","doi":"10.1080/02590123.2019.1684635","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02590123.2019.1684635","url":null,"abstract":"In the mid-1980s, I spent a number of years documenting political events unfolding in both the Natal province and the ‘homeland’ of KwaZulu (as the patchwork region of apartheidconstituted territories was then called). The events in question were related to the formation and ongoing activities of a popular movement mobilised around ideas of Zulu cultural tradition, an identity politics represented by its leadership in the terms of ‘nation’; that is, arguing for the primacy of an ethnic national form of subjecthood and belonging. Nation and self-determination were, after all, discourses with legitimacy: struggles over who could sit at the gates guarding, or presiding over, a given ‘peoplehood’ were influencing political confrontations in many other parts of the world. Inmy research, Iwas concerned about a leader’s own ‘appetite for power’, his co-leaders and close followers, and their collective brokering of a politics centred on ethnic ‘Zuluness’ over and apart from a broader ‘South African’ vision of national unification. Yet, I had confidence that people mobilised by Inkathawere not pawns of leadership, nor of a third force (although I did take seriously the power of Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s authority as well as that of armed state intervention). I acknowledged the reality of large numbers of local people seeing themselves, and their own concerns and future, mirrored in the call to local, cultural solidarity, and in the proposals for federalism, aligned to industrial zoning, jobs, the disciplining of youth and the organisationally linked educational curriculum that Buthelezi promoted. That many also did not accept Inkatha’s conception of belonging was also increasingly clear. The stakes proved extremely high. In the violence of the later 1980s and early 1990s, about 18,000 people lost their lives and many more lost family members, their security, homes and property. ‘Ordinary people’ were overwhelmingly affected by this civil war, even as the leadership resolved their differences or shifted in their alliances. The Zulu king, Goodwill Zwelithini, long a stalwart and unifying symbol of Inkatha, switched his allegiance with ANC","PeriodicalId":88545,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Natal and Zulu history","volume":"33 1","pages":"104 - 115"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02590123.2019.1684635","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42351756","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-01DOI: 10.1080/02590123.2019.1672206
N. Etherington
Abstract This article revisits Bishop J.W. Colenso’s long partnership with Theophilus Shepstone, trying to see it as it unfolded chronologically under changing circumstances. From the outset the bishop’s missionary practice envisaged a partnership with the colonial state to deliver a Livingstonian programme of commerce, industry and civilisation. His administration of his foundation ‘school for chiefs’, Ekukanyeni, was set up on the model of an English Public School. Until it foundered on the rocks of African resistance, Colenso played the headmaster to the hilt, attempting to build character and flogging where he thought flogging was needed. The ‘black kingdom’ dream he dreamed with Shepstone was not, as presented by Jeff Guy and other historians, a thought bubble killed off by higher authorities but a scheme to which the friends returned repeatedly right up to their irreparable break of 1874. In each of its various guises it articulated a vision of patriarchal rule that challenges conventional pictures of Colenso as a consistent champion of justice and autonomy for Africans. No missionary to Southern Africa ever articulated a more extensive project of Christian imperialism.
{"title":"Bishop Colenso and Theophilus Shepstone: Partners in Christian Imperialism","authors":"N. Etherington","doi":"10.1080/02590123.2019.1672206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02590123.2019.1672206","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article revisits Bishop J.W. Colenso’s long partnership with Theophilus Shepstone, trying to see it as it unfolded chronologically under changing circumstances. From the outset the bishop’s missionary practice envisaged a partnership with the colonial state to deliver a Livingstonian programme of commerce, industry and civilisation. His administration of his foundation ‘school for chiefs’, Ekukanyeni, was set up on the model of an English Public School. Until it foundered on the rocks of African resistance, Colenso played the headmaster to the hilt, attempting to build character and flogging where he thought flogging was needed. The ‘black kingdom’ dream he dreamed with Shepstone was not, as presented by Jeff Guy and other historians, a thought bubble killed off by higher authorities but a scheme to which the friends returned repeatedly right up to their irreparable break of 1874. In each of its various guises it articulated a vision of patriarchal rule that challenges conventional pictures of Colenso as a consistent champion of justice and autonomy for Africans. No missionary to Southern Africa ever articulated a more extensive project of Christian imperialism.","PeriodicalId":88545,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Natal and Zulu history","volume":"33 1","pages":"1 - 22"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02590123.2019.1672206","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48335489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-01DOI: 10.1080/02590123.2019.1687228
Marijke du Toit, P. Nzuza
Abstract In this article we consider the gender dimensions of the public forum that was constituted, mostly in isiZulu, through Ilanga lase Natal at a time when increasing numbers of African women were migrating to and settling in Durban. At the start of the 1930s letters to the editor were still mostly from men who often articulated anxieties about control over women as part of a conversation about their struggle to act as breadwinners under segregatory rule. It was also in the early 1930s that the growing network of African women’s welfare societies entered public politics in Durban, not least through their successful opposition to plans by the municipality to impose a new system of pass laws on ‘native’ women. Exactly at this time the newspaper introduced an English-language ‘Page for the Ladies’ and invited contributions from educated women. At first it attracted no female writers and reproduced contemporary colonial tropes about proper and improper femininity. But in 1938 kholwa women who were active in Daughters of Africa created a new isiZulu language women’s page. Growing numbers of women were also now writing letters to the editor to debate modern relationships and the gender politics of survival under segregationist rule. The women’s page articulated ideas of public motherhood as part of an African nationalist discourse that pushed against narrowly patriarchal conceptions of the New African.
{"title":"‘Isifazane Sakiti Emadolobheni’ (Our Women in the Towns): The Politics of Gender in Ilanga lase Natal, 1933–1938","authors":"Marijke du Toit, P. Nzuza","doi":"10.1080/02590123.2019.1687228","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02590123.2019.1687228","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article we consider the gender dimensions of the public forum that was constituted, mostly in isiZulu, through Ilanga lase Natal at a time when increasing numbers of African women were migrating to and settling in Durban. At the start of the 1930s letters to the editor were still mostly from men who often articulated anxieties about control over women as part of a conversation about their struggle to act as breadwinners under segregatory rule. It was also in the early 1930s that the growing network of African women’s welfare societies entered public politics in Durban, not least through their successful opposition to plans by the municipality to impose a new system of pass laws on ‘native’ women. Exactly at this time the newspaper introduced an English-language ‘Page for the Ladies’ and invited contributions from educated women. At first it attracted no female writers and reproduced contemporary colonial tropes about proper and improper femininity. But in 1938 kholwa women who were active in Daughters of Africa created a new isiZulu language women’s page. Growing numbers of women were also now writing letters to the editor to debate modern relationships and the gender politics of survival under segregationist rule. The women’s page articulated ideas of public motherhood as part of an African nationalist discourse that pushed against narrowly patriarchal conceptions of the New African.","PeriodicalId":88545,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Natal and Zulu history","volume":"33 1","pages":"62 - 86"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02590123.2019.1687228","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42368857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-01DOI: 10.1080/02590123.2019.1591818
Dylan Thomas Löser, R. Morrell
Abstract Within his social millieu, Aubrey Langley was lauded as one South Africa’s finest headmasters. He served as headmaster of Durban High School (DHS) from 1910 to 1939. He was feared and loved with a reputation for fierce discipline, devotion to the game of rugby and a love of classical education. In this paper we explore his place in the history of colonial Natal and explain how a man renowned for thrashing his pupils had the wholehearted support of parents and the Natal settler community more broadly. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, Natal was witness to three major armed conflicts, the Second South African war, the Bhambatha Rebellion and the First World War. In the wake of the earlier catastrophic defeat at Isandhlwana in 1879 the settler population needed no persuasion that war-readiness should be a key part in the education of its boys. We argue that the commitment to muscular Christianity, team sport and corporal punishment rested on settler insecurity and a preoccupation with the precariousness of white rule. In this climate, Aubrey Langley was considered a potential saviour and his excesses readily excused and his triumphs lionised.
{"title":"Aubrey Samuel Langley: Schools, Masculinity and Settler Insecurity in Natal in the First Quarter of the Twentieth Century","authors":"Dylan Thomas Löser, R. Morrell","doi":"10.1080/02590123.2019.1591818","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02590123.2019.1591818","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Within his social millieu, Aubrey Langley was lauded as one South Africa’s finest headmasters. He served as headmaster of Durban High School (DHS) from 1910 to 1939. He was feared and loved with a reputation for fierce discipline, devotion to the game of rugby and a love of classical education. In this paper we explore his place in the history of colonial Natal and explain how a man renowned for thrashing his pupils had the wholehearted support of parents and the Natal settler community more broadly. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, Natal was witness to three major armed conflicts, the Second South African war, the Bhambatha Rebellion and the First World War. In the wake of the earlier catastrophic defeat at Isandhlwana in 1879 the settler population needed no persuasion that war-readiness should be a key part in the education of its boys. We argue that the commitment to muscular Christianity, team sport and corporal punishment rested on settler insecurity and a preoccupation with the precariousness of white rule. In this climate, Aubrey Langley was considered a potential saviour and his excesses readily excused and his triumphs lionised.","PeriodicalId":88545,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Natal and Zulu history","volume":"33 1","pages":"23 - 40"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02590123.2019.1591818","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45180904","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-01DOI: 10.1080/02590123.2019.1677308
Mxolisi Dlamuka
Abstract This paper traces the relationship between Harry Gwala and the Pietermaritzburg City Council over the provision of football facilities. The roots of this complex and antagonistic relationship can be traced to issues of African urbanisation in the 1920s and how the local state dealt with recreational facilities as a tool of amelioration and social control. A relationship of collegiality and collaboration with the Maritzburg and District Native Football Association developed during the early 1920s, and the City Council became complacent and failed to understand the shifting terrain of the socio-political conditions of the 1940s. In this decade, the Maritzburg and District African Football Association repudiated the City Council’s authority and openly aligned itself with the radical political rhetoric of the trade unions and the Communist Party. As Gwala became actively involved in the rejuvenation of the Congress Youth League in Natal, he also became active in the radicalisation of the Football Association; his political stance placed him in a vociferous relationship with City Council officials. Gwala’s engagements succeeded in transforming football administration from being an ‘arena of entertainment and sociability’ to a centre of political consciousness and contestation, and drew on connections with working class struggles in the late 1940s.
{"title":"The State, Political Identities and Harry Gwala’s Involvement in the Football Struggles in Pietermaritzburg, 1920s–1950s","authors":"Mxolisi Dlamuka","doi":"10.1080/02590123.2019.1677308","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02590123.2019.1677308","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper traces the relationship between Harry Gwala and the Pietermaritzburg City Council over the provision of football facilities. The roots of this complex and antagonistic relationship can be traced to issues of African urbanisation in the 1920s and how the local state dealt with recreational facilities as a tool of amelioration and social control. A relationship of collegiality and collaboration with the Maritzburg and District Native Football Association developed during the early 1920s, and the City Council became complacent and failed to understand the shifting terrain of the socio-political conditions of the 1940s. In this decade, the Maritzburg and District African Football Association repudiated the City Council’s authority and openly aligned itself with the radical political rhetoric of the trade unions and the Communist Party. As Gwala became actively involved in the rejuvenation of the Congress Youth League in Natal, he also became active in the radicalisation of the Football Association; his political stance placed him in a vociferous relationship with City Council officials. Gwala’s engagements succeeded in transforming football administration from being an ‘arena of entertainment and sociability’ to a centre of political consciousness and contestation, and drew on connections with working class struggles in the late 1940s.","PeriodicalId":88545,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Natal and Zulu history","volume":"33 1","pages":"41 - 61"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02590123.2019.1677308","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48672602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-07-20DOI: 10.1080/02590123.2019.1595770
J. Martens
{"title":"Empire and Asian Migration: Sovereignty, Immigration Restriction and Protest in the British Settler Colonies, 1888–1907","authors":"J. Martens","doi":"10.1080/02590123.2019.1595770","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02590123.2019.1595770","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":88545,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Natal and Zulu history","volume":"33 1","pages":"103 - 87"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02590123.2019.1595770","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43757059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-01-01DOI: 10.1080/02590123.2018.1473996
J. Guy
As remote as the arguments in this paper might appear, they should be seen as part of the process of developing a response to an urgent, contemporary issue: the claims to formal authority under the new constitution bymore than three hundred chiefs inKwaZulu-Natal. At the moment the debate tends to move towards two extremes. The one links today’s chieftainship directly with political authority in a pristine pre-colonial past. The other sees the chieftainship as the unwanted relict of a colonial fraud. Such views revive two old standbys of African historiography – ‘resistance’ and ‘collaboration’. This paper seeks to go beyond such polarities and identify areas of agreement upon which the colonial administration in Natal was established. It posits the view that much of the common ground upon which Theophilus Shepstone, Secretary for Native Affairs, and leading Africans, negotiated their claims to political authority was their masculinity. To be more specific it attempts to demonstrate that it was upon their masculinity manifested as power over women and subordinate men, that is, as patriarchy, that an accommodation between white and black authorities was reached. I want to make two points initially. Patriarchy, it has been argued, has been used ahistorically and has thereby lost much of its explanatory value. While recognising that it still needs greater contextualisation and definition I believe that it serves its purpose well enough here. I have just said I use it to refer to masculine power in practice, and although the social roots of the two examples used in this paper, African and European, were initially quite distinct, once they made contact in this colonial situation, there was a sufficient degree of commonality to form the basis of an agreement over a division of authority. The parties to this agreement did
{"title":"An Accommodation of Patriarchs: Theophilus Shepstone and the Foundations of the System of Native Administration in Natal","authors":"J. Guy","doi":"10.1080/02590123.2018.1473996","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02590123.2018.1473996","url":null,"abstract":"As remote as the arguments in this paper might appear, they should be seen as part of the process of developing a response to an urgent, contemporary issue: the claims to formal authority under the new constitution bymore than three hundred chiefs inKwaZulu-Natal. At the moment the debate tends to move towards two extremes. The one links today’s chieftainship directly with political authority in a pristine pre-colonial past. The other sees the chieftainship as the unwanted relict of a colonial fraud. Such views revive two old standbys of African historiography – ‘resistance’ and ‘collaboration’. This paper seeks to go beyond such polarities and identify areas of agreement upon which the colonial administration in Natal was established. It posits the view that much of the common ground upon which Theophilus Shepstone, Secretary for Native Affairs, and leading Africans, negotiated their claims to political authority was their masculinity. To be more specific it attempts to demonstrate that it was upon their masculinity manifested as power over women and subordinate men, that is, as patriarchy, that an accommodation between white and black authorities was reached. I want to make two points initially. Patriarchy, it has been argued, has been used ahistorically and has thereby lost much of its explanatory value. While recognising that it still needs greater contextualisation and definition I believe that it serves its purpose well enough here. I have just said I use it to refer to masculine power in practice, and although the social roots of the two examples used in this paper, African and European, were initially quite distinct, once they made contact in this colonial situation, there was a sufficient degree of commonality to form the basis of an agreement over a division of authority. The parties to this agreement did","PeriodicalId":88545,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Natal and Zulu history","volume":"32 1","pages":"81 - 99"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02590123.2018.1473996","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47333682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-01-01DOI: 10.1080/02590123.2018.1447536
J. Wright
Abstract Evidence recorded by Natal colonial official James Stuart in conversations with a number of African interlocutors in the early twentieth century suggests that authority over land in the Zulu kingdom (1810s–1879) was not necessarily clearly defined and was subject to contestation. Among Stuart’s interlocutors the nature of this authority was taken up in complex and inconsistent discourses. The ambiguities in these discourses contrast sharply with the bald statements about authority over land in ‘Zulu’ society made by colonial administrators like Stuart and by early twentieth-century ethnographers. This paper will briefly assess the evidence in Stuart’s records while making the point that, to understand its implications, researchers need to examine the specific contexts in which Stuart and his interlocutors conversed, and the nature of the agendas which they brought to their discussions.
{"title":"‘Izwe la li nge namteto’: Reading Discourses on Authority Over Land in the James Stuart Archive","authors":"J. Wright","doi":"10.1080/02590123.2018.1447536","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02590123.2018.1447536","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Evidence recorded by Natal colonial official James Stuart in conversations with a number of African interlocutors in the early twentieth century suggests that authority over land in the Zulu kingdom (1810s–1879) was not necessarily clearly defined and was subject to contestation. Among Stuart’s interlocutors the nature of this authority was taken up in complex and inconsistent discourses. The ambiguities in these discourses contrast sharply with the bald statements about authority over land in ‘Zulu’ society made by colonial administrators like Stuart and by early twentieth-century ethnographers. This paper will briefly assess the evidence in Stuart’s records while making the point that, to understand its implications, researchers need to examine the specific contexts in which Stuart and his interlocutors conversed, and the nature of the agendas which they brought to their discussions.","PeriodicalId":88545,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Natal and Zulu history","volume":"32 1","pages":"24 - 37"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/02590123.2018.1447536","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47174530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：