Christian Converts and the Production of Kholwa Histories in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Natal: The Case of Magema Magwaza Fuze and his Writings

What is religious conversion? Can one write about religious conversion without implicitly affirming its theological content? More critically, can one write about conversion as a historical, social, political and economic rather than a religious and theological transformation? This conversion problem becomes more acute in a context where canonised religious doctrine is introduced into a society that was previously illiterate. In such a situation the convert is required not only to master the tenets of their new-found faith but they are also expected to acquire a new skill, namely literacy. On the latter point, it should be noted that even within the history of Christianity, the notion that each believer was entitled to direct access, through literacy, to the Scriptures was a hard-won right; it was not an essential feature of the early expansion of the faith. Thus, by the time missionary expansion reached Africa, southern Africa to be more specific, literacy and Christianity were an inseparable, and as yet uncomplicated pair. The objective of this paper is not to describe or define the conversion experience. Rather the aim is to examine how the act of conversion, by being open to disparate interpretations and misunderstandings, defined the convert’s identity and social position. Although the paper begins with a review of the debates on conversion and mission literacy, the review is intended as a preface to the more specific and central problem of explaining and understanding why a Natal Christian convert by the name of Magema Magwaza Fuze, used his literacy to compose historical accounts or histories of both the Zulu people and kingdom and the colony of Natal. In general the tendency has been to assume that because missionaries introduced literacy into pre-literate societies, then the main complication in the convert’s education and life was this transition from orality to literacy. Although there have been many studies of the orality-literacy problem in and outside Africa,1 the present objective is to move away from such a perspective towards a more biographical examination of the impact and effects of the introduction of the twin forces of literacy and Christianity into the Zulu-speaking groups of South Africa. For this reason, Fuze’s work is an exemplar of the intellectual impact of conversion and literacy.