Deep hiStories: Gender and Colonialism in Southern Africa 9789004486416, 9004486410

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Deep hiStories

Gender and Colonialism in Southern Africa

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Cross / CuItures Readings in the Post/Colonial Literatures in English 57

Series Editors: Gordon Collier (Giessen)

Rena Maes-Jelinek (Liege)

Geoffrey Davis (Aachen)

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2002

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Deep hiStories Gender and Colonialism in Southern Africa

Edited by

Wendy Woodward Patricia Hayes and Gary Minkley

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The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of "ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence". ISBN: 90-420-1229-3 (bound) ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2002 Printed in The Netherlands

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

vii

List of figures

ix

Prologue

xi

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Introduction

Deep HiStories : Gender and Colonialism in Southern Africa

xxi

W ENDY WOODWARD , PATRI CIA HAYES AND GARY MINKL EY

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Genealogies of voice

State Racism and the Education of Desires: A Colonial Reading of Foucault

3

A NN L A UR A STOL ER

Domesticity and Dispossession: The Ideologies of Domesticity and ' Home' and the British Construction of the Primitive from the Eighteenth to the Early Nineteenth Centuries

27

E LI ZABE TH ELBO UR N E

Contradictory Tongues: Torture and Testimony of Two Slave Women in the Eastern Cape Courts in 1934 55

W ENDY WOODWARD

Women 's Talk and the Colonial State: The Case of Sir John Wylde, 1931-1933 85

KIRST E N MACK E NZI E

Science and the Spectacle: /Khanako's South Africa, 1936-1937 117

CIRAJ RASSOOL AND PA TRI CIA H AY ES

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Steeped histories

' Moedermeesteres' : Dutch-Afrikaans Women's Entry into the Public Sphere in the Cape Colony 1860-1896 MARlJK E D u TOIT

165

"We were men nursing men" : Male Nursing on the Mine s in Twentieth-Century South Africa

177

SH UL A MARKS

Faithful Daughter, Murdering Mother : Transgression and Social Control in Colonial Namibia

205

M ER ED ITH M cKITTRI CK WITH FA N UEL SHI NG ENG E

Gender and Fertility in a Postcolonial Moment: The Prohib ition of Depo-Provera in Zimbabwe 1981

231

AMY K AL ER

Co1:l

Sounding lines

Self-Representation and the Reconstruction of Southern African Pasts : Bessie Head 's A Bewitched Crossroad 267

DESIR EE L EW I S

Gender-Blending and Code-Switching in the South African Novel : A Postcolonial Model

283

JOHA N JA COB S

Targeted for Change: Cameroonian Women and Miss ionary Designs in Some Fiction of Mongo Beti

303

E LIA S BO N GMBA

Colonizing the Queer: Some Problems in Curating South Africa's First National Gay and Lesbian Art Exhibition

327

JOAN B ELLIS

Notes on contributors

353

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Acknowledgements

The organizi ng committee which set up the "Gender and Colonialism"7 conference was a larger affair than the editorial group that has worked on this publication. Enormous work was done by Sue Newton-King and Desiree Lewis from the initial stages through to post-conference discussions. Cheryl-Ann Michael joined these discussions and gave editorial advice. Extra burdens on the organizing committee were carried by Andrew Bank, who ensured the economic viability of the conference, and Hermann Wittenberg, who managed the logistics . Gail Smith from the History Department, as well as Bheki Mngomezulu, assisted with organizational details, together with graduate students from the English Department. We thank the Centre for Science Development (now the National Research Foundation) in Pretoria for financing the conference guest speakers, Ann Laura Stoler from Michigan and Bience Gawanas from Namibia. We are grateful to the African Gender Institute of the University of Cape Town for funding Flame director Ingrid Sinclair's presence at the conference, and for providing postgraduate bursaries which allowed a small number of graduate students to attend the conference from different parts of the country. We also wish to thank the Rector Cecil Abrahams and the former Academic Vice-Rector Colin Bundy of the University of the Western Cape for supporting conference functions. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to include in this publication more than a small number from the range of papers presented at the "Gender and Colonia lism" conference. We are very gratefu l to all conference participants who contributed to the debates that have shaped the editing of this book . We particularly acknowledge Shula Marks and Dorothy Driver for their concluding remarks at the conference, and Patricia van der Spuy, Jane Bennett and Amina Mama for later constructive comments on the issues raised. Specifically with regard to the book's introduction, we thank Vivek Narayanan, Liz Gunner and Marijke Du Toit for their critical feedback; and we are grateful to Sean Viljoen and Isabel Hofmeyr for the

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opportunity to air ideas at the "Relocating Literatures" conference at the University of the Witwatersrand in September 1999. In the slow process of bringing selected conference papers towards inclusion in a publication such as this, we hae been assisted by the cooperation and lively engagement of the contributors to this volume. We are grateful for permission granted by those journals which have published papers (Gender and History for Kirsten Mackenzie, the Journal ofAfrican History for Kirsten McKittrick, and the Journal ofSouthern African Studies for Amy Kaler) to include them in this volume in revised form, and to those archives and institutions which have permitted us to reproduce photographs. Finally, we thank our publishers for their vision, their interest, and their support .

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List of Figures

View from the Garden of George's Halfway House, by Sir Charles D'Oyly (photographic reprint courtesy of the Cape

2 3

Archives).

114

Interior of Sir John Wylde's house, Hopeville, by Sir Charles D'O yly (photographi c reprint courtesy of the Cape Archives).

115

Photograph of /Khanako, mounted on card and with swastika inscribed, in the collection of Native Commissioner Hahn (National

122

Archives of Namibia Accession 450) . 4

5

6

The bushmen (with Donald Bain in white shirt) march on Parliament , Cape Town 1937 (Cape Times Collection , National Library of South Africa).

126

Cast of /Khanako' s hand, made in 1937 and stored in the Matthew Drennan Medical Museum, University of Cape Town. Photographed by Paul Grendon .

128

Cast of /Khanako 's head and shoulders, made in 1937 and stored in the Matthew Drennan Medical Museum, University of Cape

128

Town. Photographed by Paul Grendon . 7

Thobaku, wife of Old Abraham, and /Khanako, daughter of Old Abraham (photographed by Alfred Martin Duggan- Cronin at

141

Frankenwald, Johanne sburg, 3 January 1937). 8

Section of album page showing visit to the "Bushman Camp" at the Empire Exhibition, Johanne sburg 1936 (photograph by Carol

9

Rijker).

145

Original steatopygic photograph of lKhanako (without modifications; National Archive of South Africa, Pretoria).

148

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D EEP H ISTO RIES

/Khanako as spokesperson during an international broadcast to mark the British coronation, at the broadcasting studio in Cape Town (Cape Times Collection, National Library of South Africa).

151

Eye to eye: /Khanako addresses Donald Bain with confidence in Cape Town (photographed by lise Steinhoff, British South Africa Annual, December 1937; original caption: "The 'Father' of the Bushmen , Donald Bain, with one of his charges").

12

13 14

15

Q:i

158

Steven Cohen, Pope Art (handpainted photographic silkscreen on canvas , 1995).

349

Steven Cohen, Pope Art (detail).

350

Gordon Froud, A False-Bottomed Suitcase for Robert Mugabe (mixed-media assemblage, 1995).

351

Marion Arno ld, Right ofWay (oil on canvas, 1995).

352

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Prologue

M

come from the "Gender and Colonialism" conference held at the University of the Western Cape in January 1997. The conjunction of gender and colonialism, while cer-

O ST OF THE E SS AYS IN THIS BOOK

tainly not new in African studies , was an opportun ity for Southern African scholars, students and activists to revisit old questions and probe new departures from a postcolonial and post-apartheid position. Contributors were free to define colonialism as an historical phenomenon or as a

current relevant issue. Put another way, they were invited to consider the varieties of colonialism (premodern and modem) and postcolonial ism as well. The conference title highlighted questions of identity, specifically race and gender, implying that these aspects are intertwined. The intention here was to scrutinize the ways in which gender was and continues to be constituted and mediated in relation to other aspects of identity and difference in Southern Africa, with the emphasis on processes of identification and differentiation rather than on static entities or rigid categorical groupings. In the last decade, significant shifts have taken place in gender studies in Africa and, obviou sly, in the politics of Southern Africa. One of the most provocative question s raised in this conference was whether politics and the academy had gone through a divorce in South Africa, either as a result of the democratic transition, which had drawn many gender activists into government, or in line with a broader I

demobi lization of society. Such a question frames the post-apartheid and postcolonial dynamic rather narrowly : this book in a sense attempts to open up new avenues for thinking about how politics and gender studies might be interrelated in new historical context s. We therefore suggest that, instead of a 'di vorce,' it might be I The question was posed during the closing remarks at the conference by Professor Shula Marks, who was struck by what she termed the "polite" character of the gathering, especially in contrast to the fierce debates of the Durban Gender Conference in 1991.

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more useful to see the debates in Southern Africa as a prelude to a series of new relationships between theory and politics, which could possibly go in any of several directions. It is hoped that readers of the selected essays here will find the issues not necessarily less political than they were before, but as offering some pointers to the much larger polit ical and intellectual reconfiguration of societies and historiographies currentl y underway. The quest ion of a 'divorce,' however, carries another implication . It suggests a climate where political activism (and participation in national government) is increasingl y flavoured by anti-intellectualism and intolerance towards criticism . Outside the particular case of South Africa undergoing a neoliberal 'downsizing' of the tertiary sector, the dangers of anti-intellectualism become very clear if we look at the history of postcoloni al university controls in Zimbabwe. The more energetically intellectuals have participated in the political remobilization of the country since the 1990s, for example, the more repression has fallen on the university and, of course, more recentl y, the media. On the other hand, as Bience Gawanas's keynote speech at the 1997 conference indicated, a gender-conscious intelligentsia in Namibia had managed to push throu gh significant legal innovations at that j uncture, with positi ve implication s for women's lives.' Gender itself is not, of course, an unproblematical term - especially in Africa. Feminist social-constructionist theories, which polarize sex and gender (where sex is biological and gender social), tend to foreground gender as the bedrock component of identit y. Aside from the problems raised by African(ist)s in connection with this particular feminist approach.' theorists of sexual difference maintain that these social-constructionist divisions are simplistic, presuppo sing a body or essence that is entirely outside of culture, and ignoring differences of other kinds . ' Sexual difference' incorporates both biology and culture, without differentiating between the two, so that, for a sexual-difference theorist, 'female' and ' feminine' are interchangeable terms." Relevant for us here, perhaps, is Rosi Braidotti's suggestion that sexual

2 The legislation in question was the Married Persons Equality Act, which has been followed by progressive legislation in dealing with rape and sexual assault in the country. 3 Lynn Thomas, '" Ngaitana (I will circumcise myself)' : The Gender and Generational Politics of the 1956 Ban on Clitoridectomy in Meru, Kenya," in Gender and History (special issue, ed. Nancy Rose Hunt, Tessie P. Liu & Jean Quataert) 8.3 (1996) : 338--63. 4 See Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1994).

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Prologue '

Xlii

difference can only be understood in terms of multiple differences .l Differences among women and the concomitant asymmetrical power-relations are constitutive categories of sexual difference . At the same time, as Braidotti goes on to argue, one may strategically choose to "speak as a woman," because being a woman is primary and transcends other boundaries at a particular moment. This is not to claim essentialist differences between men and women : rather, the very symbolic needs to be deconstructed.

te~

'woman' in the

Such theoretical and political strategies certainly have their place in Southern Africa. Desiree Lewis, in her critique of the 1991 Durban Gender Conference, highlighted the tendency to see gender as the primary and sole constituent of identity, where racial difference and unequal power relations could be subsumed under the banner of sisterhood: the academic and political inadequacies of the feminist discourse that dominated suggested that some delegates were either unaware or had decided to ignore many [postcolonial] feminists' recent recognition of the heterogeneity of women."

The identities of this "heterogeneity of women" are, of course, embodied; what this collection attempts to do is to speak to these complexities without (re)producing essential isms. When a timeless claim to embodiment is made, or when no historicization of one's own or the subjects ' embodiment is proffered, essenti alism recurs . Research itself can emulate the colonizing act if the research subject is taken on as part of oneself, as part of one's own history / embodiment. What is necessary is not more essentialist structuring of men and women? but a careful, critical analysis of the genealogy of particular bodies at particular times and in particular spaces; an analysis that takes cogn izance of the body as a site of psyche, soma and language.f Debate tended to focus on "Who gets heard (theoretically)?" and "Who speaks for whom?" among literary scholars opening up gender issues throughout the 1980s and 1990s. These questions were / are implicated in the construction of racialized

5 Rosi Braidotti, "Comment on Felski's ' The Doxa of Difference' : Working Through Sexual Difference," Signs 23.11 (Autumn 1997): 27. 6 Desiree Lewis, "The Politics of Feminism in South Africa," in South African Feminisms: Writing. Theory and Criticism 1990-1994, ed. Margaret Daymond (Gender and Genre in Literature, ed. Barbara Bowen; New York: Garland, 1996): 93. 7 See Henrietta L. Moore, A Passion for Difference: Essays in Anthropology and Gender (Cambridge: Polity, 1994). x Luce lrigaray, This Sex Which is Not One, tr. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke (Ithaca NY: Cornell UP, 1985); Grosz, Volatile Bodies.

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subjectivities: black women's writings, their poetry, autobiographies, novels and short stories were subjected by white women to analysis and theorizing; black women had the experience and white women then interpreted it. White (feminine) subjectivity was complex, nuanced , literate and theorizing, whereas black (female) subjectivity was monolithic, often illiterate, and experiential. These literary debates put forward self-reflexive suggestions about theorizing in South Africa" and reiterated the need to acknowledge relations of political power in the act of literary theorizing." Daymond, too, recognized the need to deconstruct sisterhood and be alert to its dangers . But, predominantly, white women's (liberal) feminist desires for a romanticized notion of an uninflected sisterhood meant that black women 's resistance to being appropriated was often ignored . Sisi Maqagi put the challenge: "Who theorizes?" and argued that the question of white women's 'right'to speak for black women was illegitimate and "should not even arise."!' Too much literary criticism informed by gender and purporting to examine representations of 'race' regarded blackness as the only racialized category, leaving whiteness as unproblematized or even uncategorized.F

9 Zoe Wicomb, "To Hear the Variety of Discourses," in Daymond, cd. South African Feminisms, 45-55; David Schalkwyk, "The Authority of Experience or the Tyranny of Discourse," in Daymond, ed. South African Feminisms, 57-76; Jill Amott, "French Feminism in a South African Frame? Gayatri Spivak and the Problem of Representation in South African Feminism," in Daymond, ed. South African Feminisms, 77-89 . 10 Sisi Magaqi, "Who Theorises?," in Daymond, ed. South African Feminisms, 27-30; Lewis, "The Politics of Feminism in South Africa." 11 Magaqi, "Who Theorises?," 27.

12 See Wicomb, "To Hear the Variety of Discourses," 48-49. Other strategies of reading and writing coexisted with this dominant debate. Some critics (all in Daymond, ed. South African Feminisms) re-presented and re-read (Southern) African writers through postcolonial frameworks, which might incorporate psychological discourses - Dorothy Driver, "Pauline Smith and the Crisis of Daughterhood," 185-206; Joan Meterlerkamp, "Ruth Miller: Father's Law or Mother's Lore?," 241-58; Wendy Woodward, "Metonymies of Colonialism in Four Handsome Negresses by Ethelreda Lewis," 207-39 - or dealt with the politics of location for the white reader: Brenda Bosman, "A Correspondence Without Theory: Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions," 301-11. See Bosman also for her cogent discussion of classed and raced relationships of power, not only between writer and reader, but also between writer and publisher. Since 1994, gendered literary debates have begun to be more eclectic - Michiel Heyns, "A Man's World: White South African Gay Writing and the State of Emergency," A UETSA Conference Proceedings 1995; Thomas Olver, "Gay and Lesbian Literary Studies: Towards a minor[ity] literature," in SA VAL Conference Papers 1995, 137-42 - incorporating (homo)sexualities and masculinities as well as femininities.

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Pr ol ogu e

The "Gender and Colonialism" conference, however, pointed to an interesting symptom of late-1990s gender studies in Southern Africa. Many white women, particularly in South Africa owing to the debates in the 1980s and early I990s, have possibly retreated from studying black women because of anxiety about 'speaking for the other.' As Driver has argued, the mediatory role placed upon and assumed by South African women writers involves them in a set of contradictions, ambi valences and obliqu ities [00') women's sympathy for the oppressed and their simultaneous entrapment within the oppressive group on whose behalf they may desire to mediate complicates their narrative stance. 13

Thus, for some researchers, documenting white women may seem the safer option . The 'complications' remain, however. The conference's proliferation of papers on white women prompted Shula Marks to ask : "Is the history of the white man in Africa being replaced by the history of the white woman in Africa?" But the issue is not simply one of content, as the question implies. Many papers at this conference read ' gender ' as meaning women. In addition, while the crucial and growing fields of masculinities and sexualities were not completely absent, the majority of papers did not judge them to be central to gender and colonialism (see below) . Most strikingly perhaps , many participants at the conference also dealt with colonialism descriptively rather than theoretically. As a result , many failed to address questions of raced subjectivity. The issue - ironically - threatened once again to become un-self-reflexive about social constructions of whiteness, particularl y where the whiteness of subject and author was not problematized. It is only by acknowledging the heterogeneit y of white women 's identities in colonial histories that the subject-positions of the (often white) writers and their subjects are illuminated in relation to one another as complex and fractured . To assign new subject-positions to gender re-imagines new subject-positions for the researcher and her /his location. These positions represent more ambivalent and paradoxical absences which also unsettle the conventions of a discipline such as history, where performance still largely rests on a 'reality effect' in which the author does not insert herself into the text. The historian thus usually effaces her- or himself to present the narrative as 'true.' This points to history's base in posit ivism, which endows many historians with what the literary scholar Desiree Lewis has called the

13 Dorothy Driver, " Woman as Sign in the South African Colonial Enterprise," Journal of Literary Studies 4.1 (1988 ): 13.

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'knowing voice,' an 'authoritativeness,' as if the discourse of history was able to operate outside of signification. Lewis points to a "tremendous assurance" on the part of historians, a "remarkable freedom they seem to consider their right in disclosing and interpreting information about their subjects" (this collection). Literary studies comes from a Leavisite tradition of self-silencing, where the text celebrating irony and form has a timeless and moral authority that effaces the critic's sociocultural context; but the discipline in its more contemporary form has a greater focus on narrative strategies and the power-relations inherent in discursive constructions. This has encouraged greater self-reflexivity and attention to self-location (Jacobs and Lewis, this collection) . Rather than regarding these two styles of self-location (un-selfconscious / selfconscious) as inimical, we should consider Spivak's proposal that the potential shared space between 'masculinized' history and 'feminized' literature could be productive - as we believe it is - in the respective essays in this collection. The performance of these tasks, of the historian and the teacher of literature, must critically ' interrupt' each other, bring each other to crisis, in order to serve their constitutencies; espec ially each seems to claim all for its own .!"

Such critical 'interruption' is suggested when the writers reveal their own relationship to the material in their essay. Two examples from this volume will suffice, Rassool and Hayes trace the paths of 'the evidence ' in and out of archives. By narrating the story of the research, they also narrate and locate themselves. The attempt to construct /Khanako's story unfolds with the suspense of a detective story and the reader is drawn into the effort to rehumanize /Khanako through the writers' encounters with her traces. Their conclusion is not triumphal, because one cannot legislate how the reader will receive a new set of representations of /Khanako. The narrative of curating an exhibition brings about the direct use of the authorial 'I' in the essay by Bellis. Here, with the lesbian curator, the politics of identity and the politics of public representation, and her institutional context as curator, intersect and are made explicit and visible. Her own involvement in the story provides the means to reflect on and engage with issues of gender and colonialism. In addition, she situates herself in relation to the historiographies of gay and lesbian studies in South Africa, providing a kind of intellectual genealogy found in several other

14 Spivak, cited in Joan Scott, "The Evidence of Experience" (1991), in Questions ofEvidence: Proof, Practice, and Persuasion across the Disciplines, ed. James Chandler, Arnold I. Davidson & Harry Harootunian (Chicago & London: U of Chicago P, 1994): 381.

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Prologue

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essays in this collection. In an important respect, the presence of this genealogy addresses and goes beyond the concern for greater self-reflexivity foregrounded earlier, for here Bellis's (and others') presence is integral to the unfolding of the argument and its substance. Bellis's essay highlights the fact that in talking of gender we are not simply talking about 'women,' but incorporating issues around sexual~ties . This essay, though, was one of the very few contributions dealing with homosexualities at the "Gender and Colonialism" conference. Is this indicative of a compartmentalization, and that gay or lesbian or queer theorists are heading in very different directions from gender studies? Are gender studies the business of straight people? The study of masculinities, also highly underrepresented at the conference, points to another "structured invisibility": that of dominant men in the public record.P But is it likewise marginal to gender studies - even as it is being rapidly taken up by a wide range of scholars in the region? Given what are arguably the current crises of masculine identities in postcolonial and post-apartheid societies in Southern Africa, these are, perhaps , productive new areas for gender studies and political mobilization in the new millennium. WENDY WOODWARD, PATRICIA HAYES AND GARY MINKLEY

15 Robert Morrell, ed. Masculinities, special issue, Journal of Southern African Studies 24.4 (1998) : 605 . On masculinities, see this issue of Southern African Studies generally.

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Introduction

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Deep HiStories Gender and Colonialism in Southern Africa Wendy Woodward, Patricia Hayes and Gary Minkley

The voice speaks. Echo answers echoes. But What does the Silence say? What does the singer Sing that is more accurate and pure Than the silence after the echoes have fallen?' The voice is from the beginning a form of architecture - not a means of self-projection but one half of an arch, an echo anticipating an echo.?

T

H E C O N C EP T OF VO IC E has become a sedimented trope, particularl y in (feminist) literary criticism and historica l studies. In the customary hierarchization of voice and silence, voice is situated at the apex, silence at the lowest point. Finding a voice or claiming a voice is equated , without nuance or particularities, with the empowerment of the speaker, whereas silence / the silenced speaker is equated with disempowerment, the danger of silence being that "you will be said .,,3 What we wou ld like to propose here is a theoretical move beyond the un-

questioning and undifferentiating use of the voice / silence binary, and to suggest that we need to scrutinize how we situate manifestations of voice, silence, and what lies

I Ruth Miller, " Voice. Silence. Echo," in Miller, Poems, Prose, Plays, ed. Lionel Abraham s (Cape Town : Carrefour, 1990): 43. 2 Paul Carter, The Sound In-Between: Voice, Space, Perf ormance (Kensington: New South Wales UP, 1992): 12.

3 Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989): 80.

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in-between along the axis of empowerment. Voice/ silence is, then, a construction that needs updating, a "practice of representation" (to use Taussig's phrase) that requires examination . The terms 'voice' and 'silence' also demand expansion; taking our cue from the essays in this collection, we elaborate them in complex and metaphoric ways which include new forms of voicing and silence within gendered colonial contexts. as the principle of pure self-assertion comes to govern the public world of men, human agency is enslaved by the objects it produces, deprived of the personal authorship and recognizing response that are essential to subjectivity. On the other hand, private life, whieh preserves authorship and recognition, is isolated, deprived of social effectiveness.'

Traditionally, as it were, the predominant functions of these public and private spaces have always been gendered in Western social formations, with the public space of power, politics and language represented as a male preserve and the private space of domesticity, caring and the body represented as the female equivalent. In her analysis of these spheres, Jessica Benjamin argues that the public sphere, in which caring and recognizing others' needs is impossible, depends on the private sphere to "cooperate." The public sphere of rationality cannot "serve [...] as an intersubjective space/" Such "spatial structuring practices," as Nancy Duncan emphasizes, have often been employed to "construct, control, discipline, confine, exclude and suppress gender and sexual difference" in the interest of maintaining "traditional patriarchal and heterosexist power structures/" But a validation of speech over silence endorses this (gendered) split, because it incorporates a neglect of (apparently private) silence over (visibly public) speech. To accede to the differentiations between the two spheres is to accede to another manichaean opposition which neglects the heterogeneity of both public and private and what lies in-between. Gossip, scandal and rumour are all discourses that function in both these spheres; they publicize what is,

4 Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (London: Routledge, 1993) : 185. 5 Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Love and the Problem of Domination (New York: Pantheon, 1988): 197. 6 Nancy Duncan, "Renegotiating Gender and Sexuality in Public and Private Spaces," in BodySpace: Destabilising Geographies of Gender and Sexuality, ed. Duncan (London & New York: Routledge, 1996) : 127-28.

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apparently, secret, and point to a spiralling continuum, a genealogy of voices and voicing, rather than adhering to clearl y demarcatable private and public spaces.

In addition, a validation of the (spoken) rational over the (unspoken) non-rational may also constitute non-Western discourses as gendered and othered. Some recent postcolonial writing incorporates these 'non-rational ' discourses in a way that normalizes them without reducing them to extraordinary aspects of '~magic realism. "g Performative acts like playing , dance , or metaphysical discourses of the marginalized or othered - curses , spells , spirit or ancestor connections - also incorporate their own genealogies of voices. Performances, whether they are audible or not , whether they are verbal or not , consitute a metaphorical voicing. Gunner discusses, for example, multifaceted forms of the social imaginary which combine speech and silence, and refers to the "embedded word" of song, dance and gesture." Issues of gender and colonialism, obviously, both feature within such othered genealogies. Silences can be replete and paradoxical; they can be "more accurate and pure" than the garrulousness of the colonizers, who "were mainly interested in hearing themselves speak. " !" The silent subject who is not silenced by external structures or "said," to use Trinh 's term, the subject who is not mute but who chooses silence over speaking, has been under-theorized in Southern African and African writings.I I A case in point for many feminist historian s is the construction of research projects that focus on the hearing of "women' s voices" from the past. We wish to quer y this in two ways. Tackling the androcentrism of male-authored so urces and th e mal e-dominated di scipline of history (in particular) only partly ad-

dres ses the problem. V Occasions of women 's audibility in written archive sources often lead to a feeding frenzy of historiographical production by feminists: and these 7 Toni Morrison, Beloved ( 1987; London : Vintage, 1997); Achmat Dangor, Kafka's Curse: A Novella and Three Other Stories (Cape Town: Kwela, 1997); Arundh ati Roy, The God of Small Things (London: Flamingo, 1997).

And see Four Letters of Love (London : Picador, 1997) by the Irish writer Niall Williams. Liz Gunner , Politics and Performance: Theatre, Poetry and Song in Southern Africa (Johannesburg : Witwatersrand UP, 1994); Jessica Evans, The Camerawork: Essays (London: Orams Press, 1997). 10 Carter, The Sound In-Between, 32. S

9

11 Another refusal to make direct reference - a discourse in-between , perhaps - is the ellipt ical and heavily coded work of Malawian writers such as Jack Mapanje; see Leroy Vail & Landeg White, Power and the Praise Poem: Southern Afr ican Voices in History (Charlottesville: UP of Virginia; London : James Currey, 1991). 12 Helen Bradford , " Women, Gender and Colonialism: Rethinkin g the History of the British Cape Colony and its Frontier Zones, c 1806-70," Journal of African History 37 (1996): 351- 70.

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subjects are frequently instances of 'exceptional' women. Illegitimacy, abortion, infanticide (McKittrick, this volume), VD inspections, violence, circumcision crises, famine - these bring women out of the shadows, often as 'bodies' in the case of colonial and postcolonial reproductive 'transgressions' or around questions of sexualityl ' But it has been difficult for feminist African historians to frame a debate on mobility, for example - outside a reproductive paradigm. While the significant calls for 'women's voices' from the past to be heard tell us an enormous amount about the way women are structured into society as gendered beings in these moments , these projects achieve methodologically but the minimum of a 'recovery' project.!" especially if inhibited by the sheer positivism which still characterizes most Southern African social history. These recovery projects imply a compulsory enunciation or 'visibilization' of women in Africa. This paradigm, which is the one in which historians in particular tend to frame the study of women and gender in Africa: namely, that of the visibility / invisibility dichotomy, is in need of problematization. Feminist African historians have often claimed that their aim is to rescue women from invisibility, but visibility might well constitute an "iron cage"15 for the subject under colonialism and in historiography. As Rassool and Hayes point out, to rely on a language of ocularity or 'looking' is misleading, for if one examines visualization itself, as in photographs and other images, the question of women's 'in visibility' is completely altered. Women, in fact, are much more seen than heard.l''

13 Abortion : Helen Bradford, "Olive Schreiner's Hidden Agony: Fact, Fiction and Teenage Abortion," Journal of Southern African Studies 21.4 (1995): 623--42; VD inspections: Marion Wallace, '" A Person is Never Angry for Nothing' ," in Namibia under South African Rule: Mobility and Containment 1915-46, ed. Patricia Hayes, Jeremy Silvester, Marion Wallace & Wolfram Hartmann (Oxford: James Currey; Windhoek: Out of Africa, 1998): 77-94, and Megan Vaughan, Curing their Ills: Colonial Power and African illness (Cambridge: Polity, 1991); violence: Patricia Hayes, '" Cocky' Hahn and the ' Black Venus' : The Making of a Native Commissioner in South West Africa, 1915--46," Gender and History 8.3 (1996): 364-92; circumcision crises: Lynn Thomas, '" Ngaitana (I will circumcise myself)' : The Gender and Generational Politics of the 1956 Ban on Clitoridectomy in Meru, Kenya," Gender and History 8.3 (1996): 33863; famine: Patricia Hayes, "The 'Famine of the Dams' : Gender, Labour and Politics in Colonial Ovamboland 1929-1930," in Namibia under South Af rican Rule, ed. Hayes et a!., 117--46. 14 Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics ofHistory (Gender and Culture, ed. Carolyn G. Heilbrun & Nancy K Miller; New York: Columbia UP, 1988). 15 Evans, The Camerawork: Essays. 16 Wallace, '" A Person is Never Angry for Nothing' "; Patricia Hayes, "The ' Famine of the

Dams '."

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But redressing the ' imbalance' between the polarities of visible / invisible and silences /voices is insufficient to understand, for example, what Joan Scott has termed the overall project of gendering, or, to borrow Ann Stoler 's suggestive phrase, the tensions between the patent and the latent (see below). At best, approaches are capable of theorizing the absence of women at other historical moments when they cannot be ' heard,' or when they are immobilized and disappear from the record. There is a need to theorize why there are cycles of silencing and voicing, to engage in more 'open' forms of writing which attend to the multiple positionings of the subject, rather than simply to insert static examples of women becoming heard or becoming ' present' in the all too often omniscient voice of the historian. The latter does not allow for the understanding of the complexities of silence in gender formations: that silence can be a refuge and a resource. The essays in the present collection, by contrast, emphasize the need to find 'third spaces' that recognize such complexities and, as it were, other routes beyond binarisms. Theorizing such a space might help us understand the processes through which gendered subjects locate and relocate themselves in the world; how they move between being vocal and mute, between centre-stage limelight and the shadowy wings. I? We need new studies that attempt to relate histories to the fragile genealogies of voice and to the performances of gendered colonialisms. This not only moves us past notions of voice versus silence, but repositions these terms and processes, along with the cycles of their opposition s.

Sounding new spaces If we apply Foucault' s notion of the proliferation of power in various locations to theorizing hitherto unrecognized forms of voicing, a different genealogy of vocality emerges, something far more graduated and proliferating than the unproblemati zed radical feminist dictum that women are silenced by men and that rescu ing / recuperating voices is therefore an enablin g and empowering strategy. Nancy Rose Hunt provides a framework, under the broad title of "gendered colonialisms," that is part icularly convincing and suggesti ve. She argues that a "historical trajectory of studie s on women and gender in Africa" can be traced through

17 Michel Serres & Bruno Latour, Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1995): 147, discuss the Greek gesture of bringing things into the light, as opposed to the Roman or Egyptian gesture of placing something in the shadows in order to "conserve" it, and how Western culture validates the former practice.

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three broad frameworks : political economy; "colonialism and culture"; and, most recently, what might be called a "third wave" or what Gillian Rose calls the "politics of paradoxical space.,,18 Through the notion of genealogies of voices, we would like to suggest that in a colonial context the imagined dichotomy / difference between voice and silence was often that which constructed other binary oppositions. Having voice and being silenced were inscribed as integral social processes of colonial agency and violence, but also as gendered categories of meaning-construction and possibilities for representation. Tracing 'voice and silence' through political economy and 'colonialism and culture' trajectories reveals particular binaries for understanding gender and colonialism. Political-economy approaches tend to rely on representing voice and silence along the lines of colonizer and colonized respectively. The task, in one respect, for the political economist, was to overturn these dichotomies and 'give voice' to the silenced 'colonized' workers and peasants in particular. In broad terms, this inversion generated different and new senses of giving voice and ending silence 'from below ' and through resistance. Voice was needed for and by resistance. At the same time, voice and silence were gendered as implicitly male - the colonizer was the colonial administrator, the magistrate, the policeman, the settler farmer; the colonized the typically male migrant worker or peasant farmer. This implied that, from within this political-economy framework, any readings of white histories were essentially further 'voices' in the histories of privilege - of rulers and domination - in which the colonized remain voiceless or silenced. Conversely, and more importantly, political-economy approaches emphasized the need for histories ofthe colonized and powerless as active agents, inverting the valency of 'colonized' as customarily asserted within, and inserted into, history. Quite literally, this entailed searching for the voice of workers and peasants as a means to figure them both as subjects in history and as makers of history within colonial capitalism. Searching for and 'giving voice' to the 'previously silenced,' the opening up of hidden histories ' from below' through the 'voice of the past,' 19 and the capture of 'experience' through the oral (interview) - all this accorded primacy to voice in ending silence. In the political-economy approach, voice became the ' historical fact' of both domination and (in opposition) resistance. Highlighting the 'colonized' 18 Nancy Rose Hunt, "Introduction" to Gender and History 8.3 (1996): 324; Gillian Rose, Feminism and Geography: The Limits ofGeographical Knowledge (Cambridge: Polity, 1993): 137. 19 "Voice of the past" alludes to Paul Thompson's influential book of that name, Voice of the Past: Oral History (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1978).

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XXV ll

voices was understood to be telling new histories and challenging colon ial dichotomies. However, resistance, even if demonstrably successful, shares with domin ation a plot of action and reaction, and finding voice was not so much a counter to as a mirror of imperial vis ions and colonial dichotomies, even if told from the startingpoint of silence. Silence itself can, of course, signify resistance - that of the

n at ~ ve

informant re-

mainin g silent in the face of the ethnographer's questionin g, for example. Silence under torture denotes superhuman, even self-sacrificial strength; to talk is to give in, to disempower yourself and tho se you are forced to betray. Ruth First, in 117 Days, the account of her detentions under the Ninety -Day Law, illustrates how her resistance to apartheid authorities was compromised by speech. For her to enter into any discourse with her interrogators, no matter how much she believed she was in control , was a dangerous strategy. First represents minut ely how this tactic failed her, how a "loss of discrimination'S" persuaded her that responding in some measure to Special Branch questioning would uncover what "they" knew and "provoke" them. Instead, she found herself destabilized, and so vulnerable in her desire for conversation that she was drawn into patholo gical, sexualized discourse with Viktor: 1 loathed myself but it seemed 1 could not resist taking part in this exchange with another human being, talking, responding, proving 1 was not a caricature, a proto type, but a person.U

In Foucault's analysis of the dynamics of power within confessi on, the speaking subject is undermined and constrained becaus e she is also "the subject [matter] of the statement.,m The interlocutor, on the other hand , assumes a position ofauthority by demanding confession and subsequently judging, pun ishing and forgiving.s' Silence in the confessional may also sig nify strength, a refusal to divulge secrets, for it is the confessor who embodies power; the one who talks is undermined. Through speaking, here, the subject becomes less of a subject - as First noticed about herself at the hand s of her interrogators.

20 Ruth First, 117 Days: An Account of Confi nement and Interrogation under the South African Ninety-Day Detention La w (1965; London: Bloomsbury, 1988): 113. 21 First, 117 Days, 140. 22 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. I: An Introduction, tr. Robert Hurley (1978; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990): 6 1.

23

Foucault, The History ofSexuality, vol. 1,61--62 .

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DEEP HISTORIES

Speech and silence are relational; they occur within a discursive situation . What needs to be taken into account, then, in considering the spirals of speech and silence, are the particularities of the discursive location of the speaking or silent subject. For Spivak, when subalterns becomes 'visible' within colonial discourse, they are already no longer subaltern, but on the road to ' hegemony' and citizenship and thus retrieval is only framed within this possibility.-"

Precisely how the particularities of imperialism, colonialism and nationalism frame these appearances is discussed in a number of essays in Deep hiStories.

Colonialism's cultures Sounds in-between are ambiguous. If we try to trace them back to their origins, we find they do not belong. [...] To sound the space is to denominate it a place: it is to mark it as an historical event.>

Colonialism - in the singular - is often used as a descriptive term, as a setting or a stage and backdrop for other dramas of race, class or gender. In these accounts, the functioning of colonial power is central to shaping a framework of colonial dominance and indigenous resistance. In the setting-up of related hierarchies of subjects and knowledges - colonizer and colonized; the civilized and the primitive; the scientific and the superstitious; the developed and the underdeveloped - the citizen and the subject emerged as defining dichotomies. These dichotomies were countered, contested and overthrown as different histories were produced in writing, in voice, in political movements and in imagined communities."

24 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak"," in Marxism and the Interpretation ofCulture, ed . Cary Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988) : 287 . 25 Carter, The Sound In-Between, 12.

26 It is not our concern to repeat these debates and follow these processes in any detail here . Useful recent and insightful overviews exist in edited collections and books: Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed . Frederick Cooper & Ann Laura Stoler (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: U of California P, 1997) ; Gyan Prakash, " Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Indian Historiography is Good to Think," in Colonialism and Culture, ed . Nicholas B. Dirk (Ann Arbor: U of Mich igan P, 1995) : 353-88; and Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton NJ : Princeton UP, 1996).

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Introduction

XXIX

Once contradictory impulses of affinity and opposition have joined, as they did when the voices of India's colonial and national past bonded together.F it is no longer possible to think of colonialism as fusing metropole with voice and colony with silence, or as the reversal of this in a nationalist project. In Paul Carter's terms, "echoic dialogues" result, partly historical, partly performative, where it is hard to imagine more than a walk-on part for sounds representing what ~annot be said.28 Silence and voice shift, Ranajit Guha suggests, leading to the question of "who speaks for Indian pasts?,,29 For Dipesh Chakrabarty, the answer is clearly: the voice of Europe, or the inability to provincialize Europe in nationalist projects. Other writers have argued that colonies were "metropolitan laboratories" of meaning and flow between metropole and colony (as in Morocco or Tunisia), breaking down notions of colonizer (voice) and colonized (silence). Such an approach allows us to follow the effects of difference already at work within the illusion of opposition, unsettling the appearance of timeless permanence in binary gender representation" Sindiwe Magona's recent Mother to Mother 3 \ illustrates these powerful effects of difference. The novel, based on the murder of the American exchange student Amy Biehl in 1993, represents the mother of the murderer telling the story - to the mother of the victim - of her son's trajectory of violence within apartheid. The narrative engages with the oppositions of black /white, murderer /victim and interrogates the apparent (racialized) power, at this historical moment, of the young murderer. But gendered and ideological differences within the raced category manifest themselves : the mother, for example, is ostracized by her neighbours in the townships for having a delinquent son. In assigning the whole novel to the narration of Mandisa, mother of Mxolisi, Magona turns on its head the notion that black women have been silenced, implicitly echoing the literary debates of the 1980s and the early 1990s. In Mother to Mother, the voice of the black woman is paramount - indeed, the only voice we hear - but the narrative is premissed on an undramatized dyad: that of 27 See Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Convergences : Inventories of the Present, ed. Edward W. Said; Cambridge MA & London: Harvard UP, 1997). 28 Carter, The Sound In-Between, 13. 29 Dipesh Chakrabarty, "Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for ' Indian' Pasts?" Representations 37 (1992): 1-26. 30 Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (Gender and Culture, ed. Carolyn G. Heilbrun & Nancy K Miller; New York: Columbia UP, 1988): 43. 31 Sindiwe Magona, Mother to Mother (Cape Town: David Philip, 1998).

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the silent (or silenced ) listener. What is significant here is the fact that Magona dramatizes another under-theorized aspect of the voice / silence dualit y: if a voice speaks , who will listen? As Carter argues, our sounds begin in dialogue, not mono-

logue; yet a dialogue may degenerate into a monologue adeux if it lapses into well-

worn exchanges and "loses its power to generate new forms.,,32 Magona's narrative challenges such well-worn exchan ges. Rather than interpreting Mandisa's narrative as a monologue, we need to read it as one half of a crosscultural dialogue that relies on the absolute presence and engagement of the listener. The victim's mother is constructed as an echo of the speaker's voice: they both inhab it a similar tragic space - the end of a beloved child 's life. Conventional racialized subjectivities are undermined in such a way that the novel resonates with Homi Bhabha's notion of a Third Space, a productive place in which a new idea of society can be conceived and which may give rise to cultural hybridities .P For Magona, such a society depends on speaking and listening, on voices and silences , on newly told histories and historicall y constrained futures. Novels such as Magona's which tell specific stories of racialized relationships with in apartheid resonate with Nicholas Thomas 's argument in Colonialis m's Culture that colonialism is not best understood primaril y as a political or economic relationship which is legitimized or justified through ideologies of racism or progress, but, rather, that "its discoveries and trespass es are imagined and energized through signs, metaphors and narratives" - colon ialism's culture s - which are also expressive and constitutive of colonial relationships.l" This ' culture of coloni alism' approach is more producti ve than a political-economy approach for what it suggests about genealogies of voice. The problematic of silence is, of course, relevant to the notion ofthe 'production ofhistory,, particularly in discussions of colonialism. Michel-Rolph Trouillot argues that silences enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments: the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact assembly (the making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives); and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance)."

32

Carter, The Sound In-Between, 17.

Homi Bhabha, The Location ofCulture (LondonlNew York: Routledge, 1994): 1- 2. Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism 's Culture: Anthropo logy. Travel and Government (Princeton NJ: Princeton UP, 1994): 2. 35 Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston MA: Beacon, 1995): 26. 33 34

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Introduction

XXXI

Although Trouillot is more directly concerned with how these silences produced, within a colonial and national past, particular "voices" that were representative and dominant, his approach to the production of silence provides a useful strategy for reading gender silences and the absence of 'women 's voices' in historiographies and literatures as well. In effect, Trouillot reminds us that it is necessary to ask who is present at any of the four moments and why, hence to account for the silences of the gendered subaltern and other prospective voices rather than to erase these silent significances because they are not 'voices' in the moments of creation, assembly, retrieval and significance in History or representation itself. Reading for silences, rather than simply for voices, problematizes the gendered colonial dichotomies between silence and voice and suggests the route to more complex genealogies of voice in colonial settings. The difficulty for the fiction writer is how to represent silence as more than an absence or a lack. In her novel Maru, Bessie Head represents these complex genealogies in the colonial setting of Botswana. In her narrative, written quite specifically against racial prejudice (here, that of the Matswana against the Bushmen or "Masarwa"), she constructs a central character, the younger Margaret Cadmore, who is constituted by her silences. This had always been a strategy that critics, who have privileged words or speaking over a recognition of Margaret's metaphoric voicing, misunderstood or neglected until Zoe Wicomb underscored the necessity of reading the "fissures in [Head's] discourse where illegitimate meanings percolate through" and how they "undermine an overt womanist message. v'" While these silences represent how Margaret has been constructed, by her fostermother and the Batswana generally, as a "Masarwa" or Bushman, they can also denote Margaret's psychic and expressive abilities. In her shocked silence as a schoolteacher when taunted by her pupils, she believes she has murdered the child in the front row.37 In her silence about her love for Moleka, she bypasses logocentrism and creates vast symbolic canvases of romance. In the symbolic narrative of Maru, silence is not the Other of a voice; instead, it engenders authority. Silence, in this context and others, may be essential to nurture the artist, to nourish creativity which may remain private in dreams or daydreams or become public in outer manifestations, whether this be in a painting, a dance, or a mime (all of which can be performed in silence). In Magona's Mother to Mother, the power of the black

36

Wicomb, "To Hear the Variety of Discourses," 43.

37

Bessie Head, Maru (1971; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993): 45-47.

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DEEP HISTORI ES

woman speaking and narrating her life depends on the receptive silence of the listener, the white mother of the young woman murdered by the son of the speaker. A number of essays in Deep hiStories deal with what is usually secret / silenced and the result of making this public. Kirsten McKenzie delineates the power of gossip - what Governor Cole so mistakenly dismissed as "women's talk" - to generate a scandal that threatened the colonial government and undermined the reputation of Chief Justice Wylde. Silences (of the Governor, of the Chief Justice) are what made this scandal so hugely damaging. Scandal and rumour voice the unspeakable, but the speakers are anonymous, whereas Jane Wylde's respectability proscribed that she speak about the nature of accusations against her of incest and pregnancy. In Wendy Woodward's study, on the other hand, the secrets of the slaveholders ' torture of slave women are publicized in court-cases initiated by the slaves themselves . Here, the slave women's very marginality enabled them to narrativize the 'unspeakable' acts of violence and sadism they endured. Another silence which needs to be located in South African literary and historical studies is that of whiteness . A growing number of authors have begun to argue for the need to historicize and denaturalize 'whiteness,' itself a 'silence,' or what Rosi Braidotti calls a "structured invisibility't'" These approaches not only complicate differences between colonial entities, but point increasingly to the ways in which colonial binaries were / are constructed or based on the "repression of differences within entities," particularly those of whiteness. As Ann Stoler has argued, many studies of colonialism have taken the categories of colonizer and colon ized as given, rather than as constructions that need to be problematized. Such studies have focused more on colonizers' accounts of indigenous colonized societies "than on how Europeans imagined themselves in the colonies and cultivated their distinctions from those to be ruled."39 We suggest that a critical dimension ofthe construction of these colonial dichotomies as 'givens' relates to voice-silence dichotomies, and that approaches centering on colonial culture problematize the singular and 'universal' voice given to the colonizer or European. Just as important, however, is the fact that this approach opens the partial, limited and often very particular (and 'failed') cultures of colonialisms to view. In this sense, what might be characterized as the 'many dominant voices ' of colonialism become apparent, as do some of the histori38 Quoted in Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Minneapoli s: U of Minnesota P, 1994): 7-8. 39 Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education 0/ Desire: Foucault 's History a/Sexuality and the Colonial Order ofThings (Durham NC : Duke UP, 1995): 99.

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Introduction

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cal silences and repressions of colonial whiteness as an imagined, located and constructed "tropical gothic.T'" Many of the contributors to Deep hiStories seek to address the constitution of European identities in Southern Africa, and the problematical political semantics of ' whiteness,' within localized arenas of time and space. As the essays make clear, colonialism was not a secure, imported bourgeois project (see St~ler, this volume) but led, rather, to a localized ' making' of middle-class, gendered and racialized sensibilities in different ways at different times. In particular, the present contributions point out how the represented unity of the colonial voice of rule dissolves into fragments when concerns of gender are brought to bear on the rulers and the ruled. Rape, infanticide, sodomy and incest mark these gendered disruptions of colonial voice at one extreme; domesticity, public and private, home, governmentality, nation and the 'education of desire' at another. When gendered performances (however partial or themselves fragmentary as voices) are scrutinized in terms of the behaviour of the colonizer, the apparent unified voice and 'structured invisibi lity' of colonial whiteness and thus of colonialism and rule are fragmented into many voices. All, though, can be seen to have relied on dichotomies of voice and silence to mask internal limitations and contingencies within this construction of a 'universalized whiteness.' Understanding how a hierarchy of colonial voices was imagined and practised, and the constructed unity and fragmentation of such a hierarchy of colonial whiteness, can, with regard to colonizer and colonized alike, be illuminated by this framework of gendered colonialisms of rule. A further element in the 'culture of colonialism' approach that we wish to stress relates more directly to indigenous women. In relation to the almost singular absence of the voices of black (or colonized) women in history, except through the visible mediation of recognized colonial bodies of knowledge, Henrietta Moore and Megan Vaughan have argued that local people's representations of and interventions in a particular situation are not necessarily evident simply in speech or linguistic fonn . Much [...] are evident as practices rather than as discourse [...] Thus, concrete practices are as much evidence of agency and self-presentation as are 'voices' .''''1

40 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nations (London: Verso, 1983). 4 1 Henrietta Moore & Megan Vaughan, CUlling Down Trees: Gender, Nutrition, and Agricultural Change in the Northern Province of Zambia I89{}-I990 (London: James Currey, 1994): xxii-xxiii.

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D E EP HIS T ORI ES

Moore and Vaughan discuss thi s approach in enormous detail in th eir investigation of cite mene (slas h and bum system) agriculture, gender and nutrition in the Northern Province of Zambia during the colonial and po stcolonial periods. Th ey suggest that " loca l people's representations of and int erventions in a particular situation are not nec essarily evident simply in speech or linguistic form. ,,42 Th ey note how ev idence o f these practices survive in mi ssion and colonial archives , not onl y as descriptions o f stra tegies adopted but al so as " recog n izable traces oflocall y constructed representations of those acti vities.t':' Moore and Vaughan observe how the se representations are also re-presented as conclusions by others (that is, researchers) and argue "th is process of presentation and re-presentation is part of the active construction of history and agency, in a situation where no one's representations are entirely free of those of engaged others .T'" They therefore conclude that "local people" are present, not only through ' pe rsonal testimony' (African voices), but also within the significant domain of ac tion (aro und development and citemene agr iculture as a set o f ex isting practices) and within the texts produced by scholars, officials and experts, ev en if they did not write - or speak - them themsel ves . What the y point to is the " mutually constitutive nature o f d iscourses" and the need for the layering of vo ices and sil ences as well as of practices, representations and re-presentations in order to "crea te a space in which the di sagreements and convergenc es between them [can] be heard. "45 Voice and silence have previously been seen in political, experiential and location al terms - ' who speaks' - but we propose a shift to concern with ' how and w here

42

43 44

Moore & Vaughan, Cutting Down Trees, xxii. Cutting Down Trees, xxiii. Cutting Down Trees, xxiii.

45 Moore & Vaughan, Cutting Down Trees, xxv. In a different context,Johannes Fabian (in his Zairian case-study) refers to the "vociferous silence" surrounding the contradictions between colonial and official voices and meanings of the past, on the one hand, and the confrontation narratives of deception, disappointment and rage of "history as told" in the pictorial and the popular, on the other. He says that "matters are different when it comes to telling history and talking about it. To speak of something without saying anything - at least nothing that can get you into trouble with the authorities - is an art [...] which had to be master[ed]." This telling /n ot telling, at the point where danger could at least be signalled, and where knowledge is given form in accounts in which the censoring of the verbal telling is foregrounded by the formula, there the painting and the telling of the past become all the more powerful - powerful both as a reminder, through the tacit or muted silencing contained within paintings (or the pictorial), and as a means to "remember present knowledge of a kind that cannot be spelled out verbally"; Fabian, Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire (Berkeley: U of California P, 1996): 309.

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Introduction

xxxv

the subject speaks .' The confrontations between voices, and the "vociferous silences" in and of those voices, offer an 'in-between' or Third Space, approx imating Gillian Rose 's "politics of paradoxical space." Doing this will bring the dichotomies of gendered colonialisms into the centre. This opens the possibility not only of destabilizing the categories themselves but also of breaking them apart to expose the differences already at work within them. The "principles and practices of mutuality and exclusivity'" at work in the formation of colonial identities and situations were imagined in sets of social and symbolic relat ions of inside / outside; the thresholds and cartographies of gendered subjectivity. Gendered mutualities and exclusivities in colonial history, then, can be considered via the fragile genealog ies of voice, not in terms of being ' hidden,' or of being 'previously silent,' or of ' giving voice,' but, as many of the essays suggest, by encountering the undertruths of soundings and silencings unfolding ever more widely and rigorousl y, with an interstitial flowing of power 'in-between.' As Paul Carter argues, "the sound in-between does not originate on one side or the other. It is provoked by the interval itself. In this sense it resembles a name given to a space .t""

New categories: inside and outside The visible and invisible, the audible and inaudible, are articulated together in processes that signify traffic and movement rather than bipolar separation . Some alternative approaches among the present essays allow these 'dualities' to flow into each other, rather than letting them get sedimented into polarized positions. Ann Stoler, for example, argues that "bourgeois white identities were seen as more unstable and susceptible to change" than Javanese or other 'native' entities in South East Asia. For such fluid bourgeois identities, colonialism was an attempt to make and stabilize a social order in which middle-class sensibilities were not so much imported as made. These sensibilities promoted the constitution of those ' internal frontiers ' that are central to Stoler's argument. She accordingly stresses the importance of the sensed as well as the seen, and the fact that "the allegedly visual signs of race are tied to their non-tangible markers." There is, as she succinctly puts it, a tension between "the manifest and hidden distinctions of human kinds." These tensions are masked, in a sense, by colonialism's projecting itself outwards and drawing boundaries to fix the 'Other.' Scholars such as Fanon, Nandy and

46 47

Rose Hunt, "Introduction" to Gender and History : 328. Carter, The Sound In-Be/ween, 12.

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XXXVI

DE EP HISTORIES

Bhabha have long since drawn attention to such strategies of colonialism, rather than through naming and mapping its own boundaries and edges. Much Southern African historiography has asserted that these boundaries are contested through the agency of the Other, through ' resistance' and anticolonial discourses and practices. In such instances, the colonial order is re-established and redrawn through the re-impos ition of boundaries around the 'native' in time and often physical space - via boundaries of the location, the reserve, the labour market, the family and via curtailed movement, interaction, society and identity. But, given that the boundaries between the categories are porous, we are interested in the thresholds that are constituted to preserve the inside, as it were, from the outside. It is from this starting-point that we wish to reflect on some of the gendered colonial isms that emerge in the present contributions, and to consider a different category or kind of contestation and crisis - where the structured invisibilities of colon ial and gender 'rule' are opened up from the ' inside.' The bourgeois categories of the colonial and male self are essentially given and accepted definitions within colonialism on an unconscious level. In other words, these categories of whiteness and their masculinities remain unsaid. They are therefore lived rather than demarcated: codified within a grammar of silence. Stoler conceptualizes the processes which go into the making of these categories - the "training of habituated practices," particularly the naturalization of those domestic practices which, as Elboume 's essay shows, provided the markers for nineteenthcentury British Cape commentators to decide who belonged to 'civilization' and who did not. A number of essays reflect on the processes or occurrences when these silent categories are shaken, broken, transgressed and brought to the surface. The resultant and related anxieties, fears and dangers, it is suggested, are simultaneously wholly threatening and profoundly destabilizing . Not only are the very forms of colonial and gendered rule and identity brought out into the open, but attempts to reaffirm the stability and structured invisibility of whiteness and masculinity (their inside) become central moments when relationships with and towards the ' Other' are altered and redrawn in an attempt to silence once again the ruling whiteness of race and the maleness of gender within colonial projects. These moments of crisis imply the redrawing of boundaries and forms of rule which define and place the 'native,' rather than offering significant new demarcations of the interior self But the essays also reflect on how this recasting of boundaries is itself illusory - that the categories

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Introduction

xxxvii

are unstable, shifting into and onto new terrains of silence, with new or different social insides and outsides . So far we have been dealing with gendered and racialized identities, but heterosexualized identities are equally prone to disruption leading to yet more "category crisis"; this crisis being "a failure of definitional distinction, a borderline that becomes permeable, that permits of border crossings from one (apparently distinct) category to another.,,48 In this collection, Johan Jacobs emphasizes discursive tendencies towards difference : that languages of class, for instance, slip into a language about race . The code by which one category of difference might be represented often acts as the code for another. For example, Jacobs points out that "cultural equivocation is figured in terms of sexual equivocation" in Patrick White 's novel The

Twyborn Affair. Jacobs suggests how postcolonial writers play codes off "against each other," which "relativises their discourses." Another way to put this, perhaps, is to posit these categories as a set of homologies .t" Race, for example, is frequently the homologue of class, and is often the homologue of gender. Cooper and others have argued that ' race' inhered in the class discourses of colonial Britain.l" Such discourses were translated into the conditions of British East Africa, transferring racialized class discourse back on to the landscapes of colonial racism. When the colonial admin istration in Kenya sought to create new conditions in the 1940s and 1950s in the face of increasing African opposition, the violence of race took on overt forms. Here the genealogy that homologized race and class became visible, with new elements in that racism, or, indeed, new multiple racisrns'" which were consolidated after World War II. These conflicts of the 1940s and 1950s with their class-inflected racism fed African imaginings - freed of colonialism -

48 Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (Hannondsworth: Penguin, 1993): 16, quoted in Jacobs, this volume. 49 Christopher Pinney, Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997) 50 Frederick Cooper, "The Dialectics of Deeolonization: Nationalism and Labour Movements in Postwar French Africa," in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. Frederick Cooper & Ann Laura Stoler (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: U of California P, 1997): 406-35 ; Catherine Hall, "Missionary Stories: Gender and Ethnicity in England in the 1830s and 1840s," in Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson & Paula Treichler (London & New York: Routledge, 1992): 240-76; John Tagg, The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographs and Histories (Amherst: U of Massachuselts P, 1988). 51 Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, ed. David Morley & Kuan-Hsing Chen (London & New York: Routledge, 1996)

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about the nation much more strongly. The question remains whether the (transformed) class discourses ever travelled back to Britain and other metropoles, producing tensions and contradictions which may have destabilized the colonial (and domestic) projects further. Might this be why colonial policy unravelled, rather than (which is what is usually argued) material conditions'< or ' failures' in the colonies? A set of distinct questions emerges around the gendering of race and the race-ing of gender. Woodward has earlier shown the projection or displacement of middleclass morality in quite diffuse ways on to working-class and black or Khoi subjects.53 The shadow of sex is ever-present but not spoken of, constituting a mode of epistemic violence.t" Shula Marks (this volume) focuses on the feminization of African men who became mine nurses, but it would seem that the stronger impulse is to project masculinity on to colonized races. For instance, the cultural or tribal purity so essential to colon ial administrators is often equated with 'virility,' harking back to discourses on the Noble Savage. Thus, in diverse parts ofAfrica in the interwar years, there was a tendency to deplore "dressed natives,,55 and to oppose the adoption of Western norms, which "detribalized" Africans and caused a loss of group virility and identity. Perhaps the most striking instances of the gender-race homology coming to the surface is during "black perils ." Here, hypermasculinity rather than femininity is projected fiercely on to black men. White women are territorialized by white men in the latter 's anxiety over hybridity, 'miscegenation' and sexuality more generally" Other homologies accrue in the gender and colonialism nexus . Essays here suggest that colonized or slave women in Southern Africa were infantilized. Their ability to be ' mothers' within colonial discourse is always questioned, their maternal 52 Frederick Cooper, Decolon ization and African Society: The Labour Question in French and British Africa (African Studies Series 89; Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996). 53 Wendy Woodward, "Metonymies of Colonialism in Four Handsom e Negresses by Ethelrcda Lewis," in Daymond, cd. South African Feminisms, 124. 54 Leonore Davidoff & Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (1987; London: Hutchinson, 1988). 55 Randolph Packard, "The ' Healthy Reserve' and the ' Dressed Native' : Discourses of Black Health and the Language of Legitimation in South Africa," American Ethnolog ist (1989): 686703; Patricia Hayes, '" Cocky' Hahn and the ' Black Venus' ." 56 We do not overlook Dorothy Driver's analysis of the hierarchies within colonial signifying systems, in "Woman as Sign in the South African Colonial Enterprise," Journal ofLiterary Studies 4.1 (1988): 3-20. She has illustrated how white women and black people were placed in the same categories of nature, the feminine, blackness and sentiment. Despite these ' natural' analogies, however, the colonial enterprise marked blacks as more ' Other' than white women.

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Introduction

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inadequacies essentialized , rather than the material conditions ofslave ry or colonialism being held responsible for their perceived failures as ' mothers.' 57 Adult women, sometimes mothers, were also infantilized because of their status as uni nitiated women - Meredith McKittrick, in fact, shows the complexities of definition in any one co lon ial situation, with adu lthood within western Ovambo comm unities coming throu gh "control over women's reproductive potential," which signified many other th ings as well: "co ntrol [...] over membership in the community, whether ' Christian' or 'traditional,' over the economic system, and over political authority." Racial and class discourses freq uently also animalize co lonial subjects: Lea is tied up in the stocks, for example, and representations of Saartjie Baartman performing in London and Paris ofte n cast her as being "d isplayed like an animal.,,58 In Woodward 's essay, however, Lea's play in the stocks subverts th is subordination . Whi le Perry, the surgeon assigned to the case, testified that anyo ne laughi ng, sing ing or sleeping in the stocks "could not be suffer ing much bodi ly pa in" (Woodward) and thus continued to imply she was less than human , all these acts were taken as direct defiance of the aut horities. Play is dis ruptive of categories and generates uncertainties. In mimicry, which can incorporate play, the primary code of a homology is opened up to satire. For example, when /Khanako apes Professor Raymond Dart wit h his finick y gestures and pedantic measuring stick, she may not be engaging in overt resistance, but she opens up a space of " liminal play" wh ich allows for mockery and decoding of his gestures even in the midst of incorporation within a colonial project of producing scientific kno wledge abo ut race (Rassool and Hayes, th is volume). Liminal play and ambiguity are also introduced with the refusal of gender closure in the GAY RIGHTS RITES R E - WRITES exhibition discussed in Joan Bellis 's essay - in the face of the pan ic-stricken Bloemfonteiners ' response to works which ofte n featured male geni talia, it was "a case of the peni s being barred, ironically, by the phallus." Beyon d mimicry and play that elide the codes of do minant homologies, there are othe r forms of subver sion by the subaltern . Johan Jaco bs presen ts the gen der-blend57 Woodward, this volume; Zuleiga Adams, "Framed for Murder: The Archaeology of a Suicide Attempt" (unpublished Women's and Gender Studies Honoursthesis, University of the Western Cape, 1999); Pamela Scully, Liberating the Family ? Gender and British Slave Emancipation in the Rural Western Cape. So uth Africa, 1823-1 853 (Social History of Africa, ed. Allen Isaacman & Jean Allman; Portsmouth NH: Heinemann; Oxford: James Currey; Cape Town: David Philip, 1997). 58 Eddie Koch, "Bring Back the Hottentot Venus," Weekly Mail & Guardian (15 June 1995): wmail/issues/95061 5/wm9506 15-12html.

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ing performances of bisexuals, transsexuals and transvestites as "re-inventing themselves within the larger national project of cultural and linguistic self-invention." These marginalized subjects appropriate postcolonial homologies, claim unexpected freedoms, and construct their own metonyms, as it were, within the nation .

Shoring up the boundaries Homologies paradoxically reinforce categories, while intimating categories in crisis. Colonialism's defensive reaction is to attempt to stabilize categories that are under threat. One way in which this is manifested is to harness the powerful metaphors of purity and contamin ation. Science, knowledge, medicine and especially reproductive discourses around fertility and sterility are steeped in these metaphors. Purity took on tropological force, not only for colonizers and settlers but also, by extension, in the construction of Western science and philanthropy in colonial settings. This was especially the case with the south-africanization of racial science discussed by Rassool and Hayes. For 'Bushman' groups, people were targeted for preservation only if they were "pure-blooded ." The woman /Khanako, on the basis of her 'typical' Bushwoman physique, was held up as a pure specimen of the endangered /Khomani-speaking group . The sexual 'impurities' of her own genealogy were not mentioned. Here physical anthropology - called science - made national knowledges from the 'empirical edifice ' of /Khanako's body, organizing gender and racial discourses to place her and her community at the bottom of a racial hierarchy, yet worthy of preservation. Purity and contamination likewise work in religious settings . As Elias Bongmba points out in an instructive essay, Mongo Beti's missionaries in Cameroon lamented their parishioners' alleged lack of respect for sexual purity and monogamy. As they targeted African women for' change,' in effect attempting to supplant one patriarchal system with another, women were cordoned off in separate dwelling spaces (sixas) within the mission stations. Churches in Southern Africa also fixed on women as the vehicle for carrying the purified nation and motherhood into modernity, as Marijke Du Toit's discussion ofAfrikaner women amply demonstrates . What other 'vectors of infection' endanger colonial and postcolonial boundaries ? It is not just a quest ion of racial and sexual mixing; category transformations can be

affected by the illegitimate transfer of substances . Women's rather than men's bodies are represented as more vulnerable to contamination, and, like nations, with which they are often conflated, they are cast as needing purity, policing and protection. According to the technologies of sex, male bodies are by contrast not gendered or

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xli

nationalized in the same way. When Shula Marks, in her contribution, considers the case of the mine hospital, for example, she does not represent the sick miners' male bodies as constituting national bodies. Instead, the framework of political economy, while acknowledging that these are male bod ies, literally classes them as migrant/ workin g-class bodies. Unlike women's bodies, Marks's male bodies are relatively seamless - except, of course, when female nurses interfer~ too invasively. The strongest example of women's bodies being constructed as national bodies can be found in Amy Kaler 's essay on Depo-Provera . Kaler suggests that, prior to independence in 1980, the contraceptive was seen by Zimbabwean male guerrillas as an attack on African s as sexual beings , undermining local concept ions of femininit y and virility, thus threatenin g what Stoler calls a "cultural contagion ." Guerrillas claimed that the drug was being promoted in an effort to exterminate Zimbabwe ans . Depo-Provera marks out the dissensions and differing attitudes concerning population control , 'family plann ing ' and sexuality. These were competing discourses and measures for reasserting the crumbling boundarie s around control of female sexuality. On the one side, they were scientific and inserted, a set of intimate intrusions as some Zimbabwean women adopted new cultures of the body; the other discourses and measures were cast as culturally embedded. These banked on self-control, inspired by spirituality rather than science, drawing on beliefs centred on the task of liberating the ancestors' land from the white settlers and returning it to generati ons present, past and to come. During such tasks - which would include guerrilla missio ns into rural villages and interaction with local peasants - sexual activity was taboo. Such proscription was another example of inside (belief! self-control) exerted over outside (science / drug). In the postcolonial context these debates give rise to the figure of the male Zimbabwean prude, fendin g off the vectors of cultu ral infection which might lead (literally and figuratively) to national sterility. Indeed , the controversies in past years surrounding government-led homophob ia is playing this ' infection' metaphor out all over again by arguing that homosexuality, un-African in nature, is a pathology imported by foreigner s. Such febrile imaginings remind us that "designations of racial [and cultural] membership were subject to gendered appraisals," and that sexual discourse as a "dense transfer point charged with instrumentality'P" is equally germane to postcolonial and to colonial regimes.

59

Stoler.

this volume. citing Foucault. The History ofSexuality, vol. I: 103.

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The anxieties, inhibitions and trepidations of the postcolonial male reveal many ironies. Beyond the mask of high seriousness lurk the continuities of gendered colonial control. But the ground is not firm, and mischief is "afoot in the kingdom of the real.,,60 In order not to don the mask - and for scholarship not to fall into the same humourless trap - we end with a plea for greater methodological play.

WORKS CITED Adams, Zuleiga. "Framed for Murder: The Archaeology of a Suicide Attempt" (unpublished Women's and Gender Studies Honours thesis, University of the Western Cape, 1999). Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nations (London : Verso, 1983). Amott , Jill. "French Feminism in a South African Frame? Gayatri Spivak and the Problem of Representation in South African Feminism," in Daymond, ed. South African Feminisms, 77-89. Benjamin, Jessica . The Bonds ofLove: Psychoanalysis, Love and the Problem ofDomination (New York: Pantheon, 1988). Bhabha, Homi . The Location ofCulture (London & New York: Routledge, 1994). Bosman , Brenda. "A Correspondence Without Theory: Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions, " in Daymond, cd, South African Feminisms , 30 I -II . Bradford, Helen. "Olive Schreiner 's Hidden Agony: Fact, Fiction and Teenage Abortion," Journal ofSouthern African Studies 21.4 (1995): 623-42.

- -. "Women, Gender and Colonialism: Rethinking the History of the British Cape Colony and its Frontier Zones, c 1806-70," Journal ofAfrican History 37 (1996) :35 1- 70. Braidotti, Rosi. "Body-Images and the Pornography of Representation," in Knowing the Difference: Feminist Perspectives in Epistemology, ed. Kathleen Lennon & Margaret Whitford (Lon-

don & New York: Routledge, 1994): 17-30. - -. "Comment on Felski's 'The Doxa of Difference' : Working through Sexual Difference," Signs 23.11 (Autumn 1997): 23-40.

Carter, Paul. The Sound In-Between: Voice, Space, Performance (Kensington: New South Wales UP, 1992). Chakrabarty, Dipesh. "Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for 'Indian' Pasts?" Representations 37 (1992): 1-26.

Cooper, Frederick . Decolonization and African Society: The Labour Question in French and British Africa (African Studies Series 89; Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996).

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- . "The Dialectics of Decolonization: Nationalism and Labour Movements in Postwar French Africa," in Cooper & Stoler, ed. Tensions ofEmpire, 406-35 .

60

Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity, xvii.

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keley, Los Angeles & London: U of California P, 1997). Dangor, Achrnat. Kafka

s Curse: A Novella and Three Other Stories (Cape Town: Kwela, 1997).

Davidoff, Leonore, & Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, /780- 1850 (1987; London: Hutchinson, 1988). Daymond, Margaret. "Introduction" to Current Writing: Text and Recept ion in Southern Afric a (1990)," in Daymond, ed. So uth Africa n Feminisms, xiii-xliii. - - , ed. South African Feminisms: Writing, Theory and Criticism 1990-1 994 (Gender and Genre in Literature, ed. Barbara Bowen; New York: Garland, 1996). Dirks, Nicholas B., cd. Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1995). Driver, Dorothy. "Pauline Smith and the Crisis of Daughterhood ," in Daymond, ed. South African Feminisms , 185- 206. - -. " Woman as Sign in the South African Colonial Enterprise," Journal of Literary Studies 4.1 ( 1988): 3- 20. Duncan, Nancy. "Renegotiating Gender and Sexuality in Public and Private Spaces," in BodySpace: Destabilising Geographies of Gender and Sexuality, ed. Duncan (London & New York: Routledge, 1996): 127-45. Evans, Jessica. The Camerawork: Essays (London: Grams Press, 1997). Fabian, Johann es. Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire (Berkeley: U of California P, 1996). Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks, tr, Charles Lam Markmann (Peau noire, masques blancs, 1952; tr. 1967; London: Pluto,1986). First, Ruth . 117 Days: An Acco unt of Confi nement and Interrogation under the South African Ninety-Day Detention Law ( 1965; London: Bloomsbury, 1988). Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, vol. I: An Introduction, tr. Robert Hurley (1978; Harrnondsworth: Penguin , 1990). Frankenber g, Ruth. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1994). Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism (St Leonards, NSW : Allen & Unwin, 1994). Guha, Ranajit. Dominan ce without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Conve rgences: Inventories of the Present, ed. Edward W. Said; Cambridge MA & London : Harvard UP, 1997). Gunner, Liz. Politics and Performan ce: Theatre, Poetry and Song in Southern Afr ica (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand UP, 1994). Hall, Catherine. "Missionary Stories: Gender and Ethnieity in England in the 1830s and I840s," in Cultural Studies , ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson & Paula Treichler (London & New York: Routledge, 1992): 240- 76.

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Hall, Stuart. Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, ed. David Morley & Kuan-Hsing Chen (London & New York: Routledge, 1996). Hayes, Patricia. '" Cocky' Hahn and the ' Black Venus': The Making of a Native Commissioner in South West Africa, 19 15--46," Gender and History 8.3 (1996): 364-92. -

- . "T he ' Famine of the Dams' : Gender, Labour and Politics in Colonial Ovamboland 19291930," in Hayes et aI., ed. Namibia under South African Rule, 117--46.

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- . "No rthern Exposures: The Photography of C.H.L. Hahn, Native Commiss ioner of Ovamboland 1915-1 946," in The Colonising Camera: Photographs in the Making ofNamibian History, cd. Wolfram Hartmann , Jeremy Silvester & Patricia Hayes (Cape Town: U of Cape Town P; Windhoek: Out of Africa; Athens: Ohio UP, 1998): 171-87.

- -, Jerem y Silvester, Marion Wallace & Wolfram Hartmann , ed. Namibia under South African

Rule: Mobility and Containment 1915-46 (Oxford: James Currey. Windhoek: Out of Africa, 1998). 1rigaray, Luce. This Sex Which is Not One, tr. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke (Ithaca NY: Cornell UP, 1985). Head, Bessie. Maru (1971; Harrnondsworth: Penguin, 1993). Heyns, Michiel. "A Man 's World: White South African Gay Writing and the State of Emergency,"

A UE TSA Conference Proceedings, 1995. Koch, Eddie. "Bring Back the Hottentot Venus," Weekly Mail & Guardian (15 June 1995): wmaill issues/9506 15/wm9 506 15-12html. Lewis, Desiree. "The Politics of Feminism in South Africa," in Daymond, ed. South African

Feminisms,91-104. Mamdani, Mahmoo d. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy ofLate Colonial-

ism (Princeton NJ: Princeton UP, 1996). Magaqi, Sisi. " Who Theorises",' in Daymond, ed. South African Feminisms, 27-30. Magona, Sindiwe. Mother to Mother (Cape Town: David Philip, 1998). Meterlerkamp , Joan . " Ruth Miller: Father's Law or Mother 's Lore?," in Daymond, ed. South

African Feminisms, 241-58. Miller, Ruth . "Voice. Silence . Echo," in Miller, Poems, Prose, Plays, cd. Lionel Abrah ams (Cape Town : Carrefour, 1990): 43--44. Minh-ha, Trinh T. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington : Indiana UP, 1989). Moore, Henrietta 1. A Passion for Di ffer ence: Essays in Anthropology and Gender (Cambridge: Polity, 1994).

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- , & Megan Vaughan. Cutting Down Trees: Gender; Nutrition, and Agricultural Change in the Northern Province ofZambia 1890-1 990 (London: James Currey, 1994).

Morrell, Robert, ed. Masculinities. special issue, Journal ofSouthern African Studies 24.4 (1998). Morriso n, Toni. Beloved (1987; London: Vintage, 1997).

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Olver, Thomas. "Gay and Lesbian Literary Studies: Towards a minor[ity] literature," in SA VAL

Conference Papers, 1995: 137-42. Packard, Randolph . "The ' Healthy Reserve ' and the ' Dressed Native' : Discourses of Black Health and the Language of Legitimation in South Africa," American Ethnologist (1989) : 686-703 . Pinney, Christopher. Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs (Chicago : U of Chicago P, 1997). Prakash, Gyan . "Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Indian Historiograph y is Good to Think," in Colonialism and Culture, ed. Nicholas B. Dirk (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1995): 353-88. Reddy, Vasu. "Oral Testimony into Text: A Critique of Belinda Bozzoli's W?

Brown appealed against this j udgment in the Circuit Court early in 1834, and althou gh the fine was reduced by half, he continued with his litigation, writing a memorial to Governor D' Urban. Here he included a letter from his wife, Susan Catharina Brown , because her evidence had not been allowed by the court.P? Susan Brown 's letter argued that Lea had, quite ju stifiabl y, been put into the stocks because of her maternal "barbarity." The court evidenc e reveals how Lea was symbolically put on trial by William Thomas Brown, even though he was the defendant in the cases brought by the Slave

56

57

esc esc

1/2/1/ 13; all slave ages are calculated from the Slave Register. 1/2/1/ 13.

58 The masculin e requ isites of being an " Englishman" were illustrated some years later when a churchman in Grahamstown murdered his wife. The Cape Argus of 14 Janu ary 1860 bemoaned the fact that the murderer had become "lost to all sense of the manliness which distinguishes Englishmen as the protector s and defenders of women";quoted in Patricia Van Der Spuy, " Women and Crime: The Involvement of Women in Violent Crime as Processed by the Institution s of Justice in Cape Town , 1860-1879" (Honours thesis, University of Cape Town, Department of History, 1989): 66. 59 CO 3968 .

60 Evidence from a defendant' s wife was inadmissible in court. Brown states in his memorial to D' Urban that Lea' s "repeated cruelty to her children" could thus not be proved (CO 3968). Brown 's argument rests on the absolute relegation of fami ly relationships to a female realm, to the extent that it would have been taboo for him (even at the cost of losing the court-case) to speak out in this connection.

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Protector. As in Sophia's case, Lea's transgression included her claiming her own subjectivity. Not only did Lea attempt to function autonomously as a mother (although, or perhaps because, her maternal relationships were undermined by her mistress), but she provoked the ire of the Browns because she sang in the stocks and made a sexual comment to her master as he immobilized her there (for which he later accused her of indecency) . What interests me about this case is the body politics of Lea, who was so obviously self-aware and oppositional in her disruption of the existing representations of slave bodies : she spoke publicly about the body, using both her songs and her sexuality as sources of provocation as she spoke against her master and mistress . For the slave woman, even her mother-child relationships were subject to surveillance by the slave-owner, as she was granted little or no private emotional space in which she was free to function as a parent/'! In Lea's case, Susan Brown wrote in her memorial to the Governor: I have frequently found it necessary to prevent Lea from ill using her children for although Lea on the whole is lax in the extreme in preserving any kind of control over her children still when she does corre ct them it is with such barbarity and her child Lea among the rest has to call for my interference.s-

Lea admitted that she beat her children "when they deserve it," and one cannot discount the possibility of slave mothers replicating their own abuse in their relationships with their children. v' But what is at issue here is the definition of Lea's 61 According to Robert Shell, even the possibility of becom ing a mother was limited for slavewomen by the contraceptive effect of prolonged periods as wet-nurses to the slaveholders' children ; Robert Shell , "Tender Tics: The Women of Slave Society," paper presented at the "Cape Slavery - and After" conference (Universit y Of Cape Town : Department of History, 1989): 8-10. Patricia Van Der Spuy, however, challenges his "nanny thesis" convincingly on a number of counts : Van Ocr Spuy, "A Collection of Discrete Essays," 74--97. 62 C O 3968 .

63 The ultimate act a mother could perform on her children was to murder them . Toni Morrison writes in Beloved of Sethe, who preferred to kill her children than to have them live in slavery . Van Der Spuy discusses infanticid e in relation to subaltern women in "A Collection of Discrete Essays," 152-98 . Sue Newton- King documen ts a South African case of the indentured servant, Sara, who slit the throats of two of her children; Newton-King, Hil/etjie Smits and the Shadow of Death (Institute for Histori cal Research and the Department of History, University of the Western Cape ; South African and Contemporary History Seminar, 41, 1995); her motive s were unclear , however. Zuleiga Adams writes of the slave-woman, Hester, who intended to commit suicide after she had drowned her three children . Thwarted in her attempt to drown herself, she was tried and hanged the next day for the death of her children ; Adams, "Framed for Murder : The Archaeology

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motherhood as either "lax" or "barbarious]" - Brown's biased perceptions and her failure to acknowledge that the difficulties of maternal responsibility for a slave woman might have made such extremes almost unavoidable." As a mistress, Susan Brown obviously felt justified in legislating Lea's motherhood, as though Lea's family were an extension of her own. The court records do not suggest that benevolence motivated Mrs Brown; instead, they point to the female slaveholder's desire to claim the province of relationships and emotions in her household as her own terrain . Taking charge of slave-family relationships was a site of authority which she might jealously guard, given her legal status as a minor''' in relation to her husband. On the other hand, she drew credibility from the rights of the slave-owner, who was able legally to commodify slave-children and sell them away from their mothers after the age of ten, while slaves, at least until 1820, were deprived of the adulthood that is incumbent on parenthood/" Any familial authority that Susan Brown attempted to assert over Lea and her children, however, was counterbalanced by Lea's deployment of slave motherhood. Because descent for slave-children was claimed through the mother/'? genealogy was matrifocal and the mother-child connection was legally the strongest family tie. Such a practice, which placed the responsibility of caring for the child solely on the mother, excised paternity, either neutering the slave father or absolving the male slave-owner of fathering a child with a slave-woman. The slave mother was rendered the primary parent and was often the only physical parent. No evidence exists that Lea had a common-law husband or that the children had a father involved in their daily welfare.F' While Susan Brown and Lea concurred that the ostensible reason for the latter being placed in the stocks was her alleged ill-treatment of her daughter, also named of a Suicide Attempt" (Women 's and Gender Studies Honours thesis, University of the Western Cape, 1999). 64 In another case, for example, between Regina and Bella de Jong, the mistress blamed the slave mother for the death of her children due to neglect. Regina then accused her mistress of assigning duties which were so onerous that she was unable to care properly for her family; Mason, '" Fit tor Freedom' ," 199-201 . 65 Van Der Spuy, "Some Thoughts on Gender and its Application to the Study of Cape Slave Society," 12. 66 Mason, "Paternalism under Siege," 73. 67 Pamela Scully, "Private and Public Worlds of Emancipation in the Rural Western Cape, c.1830-42," in Breaking the Chains, cd. Worden & Crais, 205. 68 According to the slave register in January 1822, Lea had three children at the time, but no male slave is registered in the Brown household. The existence of Alexander, from Mozambique, was only recorded in February 1832.

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Lea, their accounts of the event differ. In the version of Lea the elder, after Mrs Brown had beaten Lea the younger, the child had tried to put her arm around her mother 's waist for comfort, but she had pushed her daughter away too vigorousl y and she had fallen off the stoep (verandah). Lea submitted to the right of her mistress to act as a surrogate mother to her daughter, or, at least, pretended to: 1 did not speak a word when my mistress was beatin g her - 1 loosened her from my body [afterwards], and, pushing her away, 1 said to her "Go away from me; 1 may not speak concerning you" [. .. ] when my Mistress was beating Lea 1 did not utter any unbecoming expression or endeavoured [sic] to offer any resistance.s?

While Lea appeared to invoke the authority of the slaveholder in her self-surveillance, her communication with her daughter suggests that she was merely behaving expediently. This was borne out later in her tacit objection to this punishment, when she told the Protector that marks had been left on her daughter's back. In Susan Brown's version, Lea is complicitous with her authoritative mistress in the punishment of her daughter, and is a vindictive mother. According to Brown, during the punishment of the child Lea the mothe r in a fit of fury dashed her child Lea down on the flag stones of the stoep. She then seized her round the waist and violently and on purp ose threw her from the stoep to the ground below a height of 3 1/2 foot.??

Lea is represented as a bad mother, who was both violent and emotionally unstable, but Brown neglected to mention that the younger Lea was sent, the same day, on errands to the country near Melk River. Not only was this cruel if she had sustained injuries in the beating and the fall, but it emphasizes the fact that a girl of twelve years was old enough to be sold elsewhere if the slaveholders chose to do so. Lea's evidence in the case implicitly challenges what her mistress testified to. The relationshi p between slave mother and daughter, according to Lea, was loving but necessarily circumspect, because it was always being surveyed: When 1 saw Lea this morning [at the court ] she on ly saluted me - we did not speak further with each other - she said Good morning Mama , and 1 kissed her [...] 1 said nothin g to her except that she must stand at a distance from me. She did so - and 1 then turned my back to her [...] The Protector told me not to speak to my child."!

69 70

71

es c 1/2/1/13 . co 3968. esc 1/2/ 1/13. -

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From the court records it is unclear why Lea was constrained in making any emotional connection with her child; perhaps a conspiracy was feared . What is manifest is the fact that the dominant discourse of slavery was unable to acknowledge a slave's maternal emotions or to respect her acts of mothering. Lea's testimony does, however, bring the already monitored relationship between slave mother and child up for public scrutiny'? in such a way as to put in question Susan ~rown's assumption of functioning as a mother-figure for the slave-children in her household. Lea was, in fact, in the very early stages of pregnancy at the time she was placed in the stocks, but nowhere is this acknowledged in the court records.P Disempowered as a mother, then, she could only disrupt and subvert the discursive construction of slavery through a body politics that focused on her own embodiment. At the trial , when questioned by the defendant, William Brown, she stated that she did not "intentionally [...] indecently expose [her]self' to him when he was putting her in the stocks but it was on account of my petticoat beingrather narrow or tight, and my legs being placed so wide asunder- It wasthe samepetticoat 1 now wear.74 In court, Lea was then placed in the stocks, and it "appeared her petticoat would go down her legs up to the stocks" (my emphasis). Lea's disclaimer about her modesty here was thus made a mockery of, not only by the court's act of relocating her in the stocks to test whether she had purposely exposed herself, but by her own selfrefle xive comment at the time of the event. Her speaking about her body was a selfempowering strategy: Myn gat is te voren al open gerekt geword en, en kan het maar verder opengerekt worden. [Translated as] "my hole has before been stretched open (exposed) now it can be done further."75 While she explained to the court that she had been in the stocks before, the accusation of her master is blatant.

72 Mother--child relations in male-dominant cultures, as Jane Flax reminds us, are "simultaneously romanticized, devalued, denied, repressed, and placed firmly outside the public realm"; Flax, Disputed Subjects: Essays on Psychoanalysis, Politics and Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1993). Leachallenged thisconstruction of maternity. 73 The slave register records the birth of Diamant in August 1834 (and his death in October 1834). As no otherfemale slavewasregistered forthe Browns, 1 assumethatthis childwas Lea's. 74 es c 1/2/1/13. 75 esc 1/2/1/14 .

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WENDY WOODWARD

At the very least, she implicated him in her sexual objectification, at worst in her rape / seduction." She read, expertly, his placing of her in the stocks as an act of his metonymic relegating her to the status of a sexually available body. By calling attention to the significance of her master's disposition of the limbs of her body, she transformed her sexuality, in a way that was extremely apposite, into a site of resistance. Consequently, her reference to her usually silenced body was an aggressive act, as well as a revolutionary one. To deploy the female body in this way is both risky and potentially selfdestructive. Wolff, for example, argues that it is almost impossible in contemporary gender relations to use the female body per se as a site of resistance because of the delineation of women's bodies as passive and as objects of the male gaze,?? but in Lea's case, in the nineteenth century, she astutely called attention to the appropriation of her body and simultaneously shamed her master. Lea's self-reflexive reference could only have been made by a slave-woman whose body was inherently perceived as existing in the public domain. Lea's statement had many repercussions in court. The testimony of Thomas Perry, the District Surgeon, underscores the colonial anxiety about Lea's representation of William Brown.78 While Perry noted that Brown 's stocks were more severe than those in the prison, because the latter permitted the person to lie down, and admitted that the location of the holes, being further apart than the regulations, would add to "inconvenience," he denied that the sex of the person confined was relevant. In erasing Lea's femininity and the concomitant potential for indecency in the configuration of the slave-woman's body in the stocks, Perry's statement points to one of the central lacunae of Western culture: the inability of men to recognize women 's specificity and difference from them, so that Western culture is essentiall y masculinist."? More specifically here, in the context of the court-case , Perry's opi-

nion is also evidence of a middle-class ideology that erases the femaleness of working-class or slave women except when they are sexually desirable. 76 Fox-Genovese notes that in the North American context a slave-woman' s resistance to the slaveholder's sexual exploitation was particularly difficult, given his powers over her; consequently, a seduction was tantamount to rape; Fox-Genovese , Within the Plantation Household, 325. 77 Wolfe Feminine Sentences, 121. 78 Thomas Perry's position was a multi-faceted one. In the Circuit of November 1834, Perry, as Deputy Sheriff, signed the list of jurors . The first juror to record his name was William Thomas Brown (CSC 1/2/ 1/ 14). 79 Luce Irigaray, An Ethics Of Sexual Difference, tr. Carolyn Burke & Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca NY ; Cornell UP, 1993).

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Contradictory Tongues Thus, while Perry ignored her sex, he represented Lea as a raced Other: I have often seen people of Lea' s class sitting on their hams on the ground for hours together - I think that person s used to sit in that posture will feel less pain if confined in the manner described by Lea than others not used to it,80

According to Perry, not only was the black slave body biologically different (from the colonial body), but it lacked sensibility and was less able to feel pain. 8 1 Perry was then cross-examined by Brown, and stated categorically that a person laughing , singing or sleeping in the stocks "could not be suffering much bodily pain"; on the other hand, "a person may suffer some bodily pain and still amuse himself with his children'f? He appeared certain about his incriminating judgement of Lea: I should think after hearing Lea say that she did not care for [being in the stocks] , that she did so out of bravadoP

When Perry was examined by the Protector, however, he admitted that he had seen people laughing and singing during the infliction of judicial punishment, and said that while "a person may sleep during the suffering of bodily pain when nature is exhausted'r'" he did not believe that the stocks could lead to exhaustion as in the case of torture. Both Brown and the District Surgeon spoke, either directly or indirectly, of their anxiety about Lea's agency. Even the court scribe underlined the word "bravado," as though any demonstration of such resistance on Lea's part was a punishable offence . In Perry's vacillations while being questioned, Lea was represented as not suffering much pain - therefore she could sing and play with her children - but at the same time she was suffering to some extent - therefore her

80

esc

1/2/1/13.

81 Catherine Bums records that the "commonly proferred 'wisdom' " in South Africa from the 1920s and through the 1940s among both the medical community and the white lay public was the "ease with which black women gave birth"; Bums, "Bantu Gynaecology ": The Science of Women in South Africa, 1920-1956 (Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town : Africa Seminar, 1996): 15-16. As she emphasizes, this belief pointed to the inherent "physicality" and "primitivity" of black women, a stereotype which, insidiously, was used to justify the lack of maternal facilities for black women (16-17). This stereotype also meant that black women were seen as being able to bear birthing pain more easily than white women (17). 82 es c 1/2/1/ 13. 83 84

e sc e sc

1/2/1/13; emphasis in the original. 1/2/1/13.

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engagement in singin g and laugh ing could be framed as an example of resistance, a "bravado" that could not be tolerated. It is difficult to establi sh from the records that exist whether Brown 's fine was commut ed because of Lea's comportment or whether it was because he managed to shift the blame on to his stock-maker for erroneousl y dupli cating the regulation measurements of the prison stocks by placing the leg-holes too far apart. What is obvious, howe ver, is that Lea's embodiment and the constituti on of herself as a speaking subject transformed her immobilization in the stocks into an act of resistance as she claimed sovereignty over the territory of the voice. Singing was constituted by the defendant as somehow more transgres sive than talk ing, as a particul ar statement of empowerment on Lea's part. 85 Playing with her children was also labelled a conscious displ ay by Lea against the slaveholder 's regime . Play is, I would suggest , inimical to any regime that depends on violence for its existence. Not only does it threaten order by undermining hierarchies based on age, gender or class , but in its creativity it subverts Western culture' s admiration of the intellect. Play / creativity is usually denigrated as a pursuit of children, as "childish," so threatening is it to the adulthood validated in Western culture . Lea 's display of playing with her children can also be read as a statement of bod y politics. Similarly, by going to the Slave Protector and relating her narrative to him, Lea brought to public notice her motherhood, her sexuality and her singi ng, on her own terms and in a way that challenged the construction of the slave, who was not permitted to display motherh ood as pleasurable, whose body, while being sexually approp riated, was not gendered as feminine and whose subjectivity was not recognized. But did Lea challen ge it alone or did she speak on behalf of other slave women ? Could we compare her evidence to testimonio, a particul ar working-class form of autobiog raphical narrativ e which, according to John Beverley/" although it affirms the speaking subject, is democratic and egalitarian in intention, purporting always to 85 Singing may, of course, be used as a mode for conveying revolutionary messages. See Jonathan Lamb's paper on the death-song, which was sung defiantly by native Americans being tortured to death; Lamb, "The Deathsong: The Savage Complaint in Eighteenth Century Theories of Civil Society," paper presented at "The Body in The Library" conference (University of Queensland, 1994). 86 John Beverley, "The Margin at the Center: On Testimonio (Testimonial Narrative)," in Del colonizing the Subject, ed. Sidonie Smith & Julia Watson (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1992): 91- 114.

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speak for others? Fox-Genovese, in her study of slavery, regards slave rebellion of the kind that ends up in court to be individualistic.V The evidence of the court-cases support this; certainly Lea, like Sophia, seemed only to be speaking for herself Too many slaves were not prepared to challenge the slave-owners (as I indicated in connection with Sophia's case), not only because the risks were too high in the face of the slave-owners' power, but also because the slave had to be p~epared to re-live the trauma she had undergone.l" But if we consider Lea and Sophia's testimonies and representations of themselves as self-conscious narrative acts of witnessing to a politics of the female slave body, they did not just record their own traumatic histories. Their identities took cognizance of an emancipatory agenda that contradicted slavery on both literal and metaphoric levels, through the complexities of the silences involved and through their narrativizing and many-faceted voicings.

WORKS CITED Adams, Zuleiga. "Framed for Murder: The Archaeology of a Suicide Attempt" (Women 's and Gender Studies Honours thesis, University of the Western Cape, 1999). Armstrong, Nancy, & Leonard Tennenhouse. "Representing Violence, or ' How the West was Won'," Introduction to The Violence of Representation: Literature and the History of Violence, ed . Armstrong & Tennenhouse (London & New York: Routledge, 1989): 1-26. Attwell, David . Interview with Homi Bhabha, Current Writing 5.2 (1993): 100-13. Beverley, John. "The Margin at the Center: On Testimonio (Testimonial Narrative)," in De/colonizing the Subject, ed. Sidonie Smith & Julia Watson (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1992): 91-114. Bradford, Helen . " Women, Gender and Colonialism: Rethinking the History of the British Cape Colony and its Frontier Zones , c. I806-70," Journal OfAfrican History 37 (1996) : 351-70. Bums, Catherine. "Bantu Gynaecology ": The Science of Women in South Africa, 1920-1956 (Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town : Africa Seminar, 1996). CO . Colonial Office Records Housed in South African Archives.

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Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household.

Lea did get some support in court from Roos, "a female slave" (possibly from another household, as she was not registered as one of the Brown 's slaves) , who testified that Lea was put in the stocks as she had claimed. But the Protector then "desisted from her evidence and closed his case" (CSC 1/2/1/13). In Sophia's case, the other slaves ' fear of going too far against the slaveholders in court was obvious. But it is possible to detect covert support for Sophia: she managed to remain hidden on the Swarts ' farm for some time, and perhaps her escape after being tied to a tree was possible becau se she had been lightly bound . 88

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esc . Cape Supreme Court Records Housed in South African Archives. Dobash, Russell P., R. Emerson Dobash & Sue Gutteridge. The Imprisonment of Women (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986). Felman, Shosha na, & Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis

and History (New York: Routledge, 1992). Ferguson, Moira. Subject to Others: British Women Writers and Colonial Slavery. 1670-1 834 (New York : Routled ge, 1992). Flax, Jane. Disputed Subjects: Essays on Psychoanalysis, Politics and Philosophy (New York: Routled ge, 1993). Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, tr. Alan Sheridan (Harmondsworth : Penguin : 1977). Fox- Genovese, Elizabeth. Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old

South (Chapel Hill: U Of North Carolina P, 1988). Franken, Jim. Piet Retief se Lewe in die Kolonie (Cape Town: De Bussy, 1949). Frankenberg, Ruth. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (London: Routledge, 1993). Freud, Sigmund. Collected Papers, vol. 2 (International Psycho-Analytical Library, ed. Ernest Jones, tr. Joan Riviere; London: Hogarth Press & The Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1948). Grosz. Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1994). Irigaray, Luce. An Ethics Of Sexual Difference, tr. Carolyn Burke & Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca NY: Cornell UP, 1993). Khan, M. Masud R. Alienation in Perversions (1979; London: Maresfield Library, 1989). Lamb, Jonathan. "The Deathsong: The Savage Complaint in Eighteenth Century Theories of Civil Society," paper presented at "The Body in The Library" conference (University of Queensland, 1994). Mason, John Edwin, Jr. '" Fit for Freedom' : The Slaves, Slavery and Emancipation in the Cape Colony, South Africa, 1806 to 1842" (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 1992). -

- . "Paternalism under Siege: Slavery in Theory and Practice during the Era of Reform, c.1825 through Emancipation," in Breaking The Chains: Slavery and its Legacy in the Nineteenth-

Century Cap e Colony, ed. Nigel Worden & Clifton Crais (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand UP, 1994): 45-77. Mulvey, Laura . Visual and Other Pleasures (Theories of Representation and Difference, ed. Teresa De Lauretis; Bloomingt on & Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1989). Nair, Janaki. "On the Question of Agency in Indian Feminist Historiography," Gender and History 6.1 (1994): 82-100. Newton-King, Sue. Hilletjie Smits and the Shadow of Death (Institute for Historical Research and the Department of History, University of the Western Cape; South African and Contemporary History Seminar, 41, 1995).

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Ross, Robert . Beyond the Pale: Essays on the History of Colonial South Africa (Johannesburg: Witswatersrand UP, 1994). Sachs, Alb ie. Enter the British Legal Machine: Law and Administration at the Cape, 1806-1910 (Institute of Commonwealth Studies; Collected Seminar Papers on the Societies of Southern Africa in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 1969-1970). Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Makingand Unmakingofthe World(New York: Oxford UP, 1985). Scott, James . Weapons of The Weak: Everyday Forms ofPeasant Resistance (New Haven CT: Yale UP, 1985). Scully, Pamela . Liberating the Family? Gender and British Slave Emancipation in the Rural

Western Cape, South Africa, 1823-1853 (Social History of Africa Series, cd. Allen Isaacman & Jean Allman; Portsmouth NH : Heinemann , 1997). - -. " Private and Public Worlds Of Emancipation in the Rural Western Cape, c.183Q-42," in

Breaking The Chains : Slavery and its Legacy in The Nineteenth-Century Cape Colony, ed. Nigel Worden & Clifton Crais (Johanne sburg: Witswatersrand UP, 1994): 201-33. Shell, Robert . Children Of Bondage: A Social History Of The Slave Society At The Cape OfGood

Hope, 1652-1838 (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand UP, 1994). -

-. "Tender Ties: The Women of Slave Society," paper presented at the "Cape Slavery - and After" conference (University of Cape Town: Department of History, 1989).

Spivak , Gayatri Chakra vorty. "Can the Subaltern Speak'?" in Marxism and the Interpretation of

Culture, ed. Cary Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg (London: Macmillan, 1988): 271-313 . Stoler, Ann Laura. Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault s History of Sexuality and the

Colonial Order ofThings (Durham NC: Duke UP, 1995). Van Der Spuy, Patricia. "A Collection of Discrete Essays with the Common Theme of Gender and Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope with a Focus on the 1820s" (Masters thesis, University of Cape Town, Department of History, 1993). - -. "Some Thoughts on Gender and its Application to the Study of Cape Slave Society at the End of the Eighteenth Century," paper presented at the "Cape Slavery - and After" Conference (Univer sity Of Cape Town: Department of History, 1989). . -

-. "Women and Crime : The Involvement of Women in Violent Crime as Processed by the Institutions of Justice in Cape Town, 1860--1879" (Honours thesis, University of Cape Town, Department of History, 1989).

Wolff, Janet. Feminine Sentences : Essays in Women and Culture (Cambridge : Polity, 1990). Worden, Nigel. Slavery in Dutch South Africa (African Studies Series 44; Cambridge : Cambridge UP, 1985). - -, & Clifton Crais, ed. Breaking the Chains: Slavery and its Legacy in the Nineteenth-Century

Cape Colony (Johanne sburg: Witwatersrand UP, 1994).

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Women's Talk and the Colonial State The Wylde Scandal, 1831-1833 1 Kirsten Mackenzie

B

ET WEEN 1831 AND 1833 Cape society was rocked by a scandal in which the accusations directed at the Chief Justice of the Colony, Sir John Wylde, were considered to be so unspeakable that the participants in the debate over the matter were at a loss as to how to express them candidly. Out of the tangle of metaphor and anonymous accusations that resulted emerges a story which illuminates a range of issues relating to the nature of respectability in the colonial context and the importance of gender roles in the conduct of public life and Cape politics . This essay seeks to make sense of the important and complex relationship between gender and the private and public spheres in the operation of colonial politics at the Cape by analysing the accusations of incest and concealment of pregnancy which were directed against Sir John Wylde and his daughter, Jane Elizabeth. The scandal that emerged was informed by contemporary notions of male and female knowledge, expressed through the concept of "delicacy." Its course was influenced by important issues surrounding the behaviour of men in public life and the influence exercised by women and the private sphere on the operation of colonial social and political life. The involvement of the press sheds light on the function of the newly emerged masculine public sphere in Cape Town, and on its

I This essay is a version of a chapter in my doctoral dissertation, "Gender and Honour in Middle-Class Cape Town: The Making of Colonial Identities, 1828-1850." I wish to thank Karel Schoeman for his generous help and for first bringing the Wylde Collection in the South African Library to my attention. Stanley Trapido , Robert Ross, Harriet Deacon, Helen Bradford , Ruth Watson, Ann Stoler, Andrew Bank and other delegates at the "Gender and Colonialism " conference (Univer sity of the Western Cape, 1997) kindly commented on drafts.

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vulnerability to government autocracy. Finally, the scandal coincided with a period of political stress in a colony approaching emancipation, and the colonial press's defence of Wylde was informed by both middle-class political aspirations and ethnic tensions between British and Dutch. In exploring the range of issues surrounding the Wylde scandal, I argue for the important influence of gender roles on political and social life at the Cape in the early nineteenth century.

Turbulent times: the colonial setting of the Wylde affair The theatre in which the dramas of the Wylde family were staged was the capital city of what had previously been a Dutch colonial possession but had been under British rule more or less permanently since the closing years of the eighteenth century. Cape Town in the 1830s was undergoing a range of socio-economic transformations involving the anglicization of the colony in the domains of politics, the law, commercial practices and social relations . Creating the deepest social divisions of all were the developments that would lead to the slave-emancipation legislation of 1834. The era was marked by the establishment of a new political culture among the colonial middle class of the city, centred on the press and sites of masculine public assembly. These embryonic stirrings of a colonial public sphere were threatened by the civil strife that attended the emancipation debates. If the years 1831 to 1833 were a time of crisis for the Wylde family, they were also a period of immense turmoil in the colony as a whole, and open rebellion, by either slaves or slave-owners, was not an inconceivable threat. The Wylde affair became caught up in both the struggle for white political representation and in the deep divisions within Cape society over what was referred to as the Slave Question. This seemingly incongruous connection between the illicit pregnancy of a young woman from the elite and the political fate of the Cape colony was a function both of the centrality of private life to the conduct of politics and of the manner in which the government's handling of the case resonated with white colonists' agitation for political reform in the context of approaching emancipation. It was only in the I820s that Cape Town saw the beginnings of the development of a public sphere.i Criteria for admission of a private individual into the 2 Thomas McCarthy, "Introduction" to Jiirgen Habermas, The Structural Trasnformations of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category ofBourgeois Society, tr. Thomas Burger, with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (1962; tr. Cambridge: Polity, 1989): xi. Habermasian publicsphere theory has been subjected to several well-argued feminist critiques but remains a useful way in which to approach ideas of public-sphere politics in this period. As the present essay

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Wom en 's Talk and th e Colon ial State

domain of this public sphere involved dimensions of class, race and gender. The Cape press, whose freedom from government restraint was still precarious, became intim atel y concerned in the Wylde affair. As one of the most visible elements of the new social and political dispensation being formed during this per iod, it was a fund amentally masculine domain in both content and authorship. Readership, of course , is more diffi cult to det ermine, but the pap ers were

cert~i n ly

aimed self-

con sciously at a predominantly male readership. As the Wylde case makes clear, they projected themselves in opposition to a perceived female world of orality presented as "gossip." The press provided a vehicle for the respectable cla sses of Cape Town to articulate their social , economic and political aspirations, in particular their desire for a Legislative Assembly. It was supported in material form by the Commercial Exchange, a building completed in 1822, and by the growing numbers of soc ieties, coffee hou ses and other sites of assembly for polite soc iety in the cit y. The press war of the early 1830s, in which the Wylde affair became embroiled, between the two rival colonial papers De Zuid-Afrikaan and the So uth Af rican

Commercia l Advertiser was one man ifestation of deep divisions within Cape society over the Slave Question. The politi cal context in which the allege d pre gnan cy of Jane Wylde occurred is central to the narrative . Follo wing the implementation of an Ord er in Council in 1831, which laid down, among other provision s, that slaveow ners kee p a pun ishm ent record- book for the inspection of the co lonial authorities, th ere we re riots in the nearb y town of Stellenbosch in April of that year, just as the Wylde affair first reach ed the newspapers.? In the same year, Cole denied permission for public meetin gs to be held in Cape Town to discu ss the slave issue ." In 1832 in Ko eberg, about fifteen miles from Cape Town , the reactions of slave-ow ners to the Order in Council of 183 I were particularl y vehement; the result s were public meetings and letters to the press in which open rebellion was hint ed at. Cole responded with a show of government strength by overriding the argues, the situation was more complex than Habermasian theory might lead one to believe. See Nancy Fraser, "Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy," Geoff Eley, "Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century," and Mary Ryan, "Ge nder and Public Access: Women' s Politics in Nineteenth-Century America," in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge MA & London: MIT Press, 1992): 109-42, 289- 339 and 259-88 respective ly. J Robert L. Watson, The Slave Question: Liberty and Property in South Africa (Hanover NH & Lond on: UP of New England, 1990): 36. 4 Watson , The Slave Question, 129.

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opin ion of his advisory councils and issuing an ordinance prohibiting any public meeting without his consent, as well as by making a proclamation giving himself authority to ban ish those who disturbed the public peace." While Goderich viewed these actions as alarmist and ordered Cole in October 1832 to revoke the proclamation, Robert Watson has suggested that Cole was wary of slaveholder resistance as emancipation approached, and that these fears are given some substance by the affa ir at Stellenbosch."

Anatomy of a scandal: an outline of events In 1831, as the colony was increas ingly convulsed with the struggle over emancipation, Sir John Wylde was fifty years old and had been Chief Justice of the Cape Colony for four years . His household in Cape Town consisted of his mother-in-law, Mrs Moore, his five eldest sons and his adult daughter, Jane Elizabeth. His wife, also called Jane Elizabeth, whom he had married in Cambridge in 1805, was at this time absent from the Cape, a circumstance that would prove of vital importance to the future scandal." Wylde had previously occupied the position of Judge-Advocate in New South Wales, which he took up in 1816, and had left his wife there in 1825 when he returned to England to await a further posting. He would not see her again for another ten years. In 1835, Mrs Wylde arrived at the Cape with a six-year-old daughter, and Wylde obtained his divorce on the grounds of adultery on 23 February 1836.9 In January 1831, Miss Wylde had "for some time'"? been suffering from what her father described as "an Indisposition incident to Females" (3), the symptoms of

Dictionary ofSouth African Biography (DSAB), vol. 2: 164. Watson, The Slave Question, 14~2. 7 Watson, The Slave Question, 142. 8 DSAB , vol. 2: 861-63 . 9 Cape Archives (CA), Cape Supreme Court (CS C) 2/1/1/33 No 16a [or 17] 1836, Sir John Wylde vs Jane Elizabeth Wylde. 10 SAL , MSB 517. Sir John Wylde Collection, 24. This is my major source for the description that follows; page references to quoted material are henceforth bracketed in the main text. While the official dispatches are contained in the Government House records in the Cape Archives [GH 23/10: 118-217] , my first acquaintance with this case was in the form of the rough notes and appendices that formed the basis for the subsequent dispatches (providing more detail than the official correspondence), and which are housed in the South African Public Library, Cape Town. These were, up until an unspecified previous time, placed by the librarian under "restricted access," although the reason for the restriction is not noted. 5

6

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Women's Talk and the Colonial State

which included a failure to menstruate and a swelling stomach as well as persistent headaches and indigestion . I I The Wylde family appear to have been used to calling upon Dr John Murray.? whose opinion of Miss Wylde's condition was that it was not dangerous, but required "air and exercise" (4). At some point, Wylde asserted, what was referred to as a "misunderstanding" occurred between the Wyldes and Dr Murray, and Murray refused to continue attending the Wylde family. It is unclear whether Murray actually examined Miss Wylde, but it is conceivable that the "misunderstanding" between Murray and the Wyldes arose from his diagnosis of Jane Wylde. By this time, gossip about Miss Wylde's condition was already widespread in the town. In the dispatches to the Secretary of State, Lord Goderich , which were the eventual outcome of the scandal, the Governor, Sir Lowry Cole, described the situation as follows: Early in the year 1831 the reports respecting Miss Wylde's being pregnant were in circulation originating I believe from her appearance which was such as to create suspicion, and to attract observation from every one. (70)

Subsequent to the "misunderstanding" between the Wyldes and Murray, Miss Wylde was not once examined by a doctor. Wylde gave as his excuse for this the fact that he was unable to pay Murray and so felt a "delicacy" about calling in another doctor to attend his family.l ' He also that said he felt it to be unnecessary, since Murray had said the condition was not dangerous . It was later ascertained by the Governor, however, that Wylde had got a certain Dr Robert Dyce to attend other members of his family. At some point during this time, Wylde was observed in the Public Library of Cape Town. He was obtaining books relating to midwifery and gynaecology and taking extracts from them (88). Wylde then turned for help to John Reid, the clerk of the Attorney General , later described by the Governor as a "simple minded and religious man" (75). Prior to his arrival in the colony three years earlier, Reid had taken out his Diploma from the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh and had practised in England, but had never practised at the Cape except to give free medical advice to his friends when

II

SAL, MSB 517 .

In 1831, John Murray held the position of Surgeon to the Forces and was President of the Colonial Medical Committee . I am grateful to Harriet Deacon for this information. 13 Murray, however, was employed by many high-status patients in Cape Town who were accustomed to make their doctors wait extended periods for payment, a fact which casts doubt on Wylde's excuse . I am grateful to Harriet Deacon for this information. 12

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they requested it (74). Reid did not examine Miss Wylde, but prescribed for her on the basis of Wylde 's descript ion of her symptom s, which he - Wylde - claimed were very common in the Cape (26-27). Reid prescribed laxative pills for Miss Wylde between January and June of 1831 and Wylde related to him that there had not been much change in his daughter's condition during that time except that she had started menstruating again in April (24-25). It was in that month - April of 1831 - that, citing his state of health and that of his daughter as justification, Sir John Wylde left Cape Town and retired to a country inn called the Halfway House, being half-way on the road from Cape Town to Simonstown, further along the coast. The party took no servants of their own to attend on them , Wylde stating later that he wished to avoid unnecessary expense. The Wyldes remained resident at the Halfway House until the first week in August, with Sir John making trips to town to attend the court . During this time, the Governor claimed , the family received no visitors except for a certain Dr Stevenson , a passenger in a convict ship going to New South Wales, in late April and earl y May (60). Miss Wylde was denied to her intimate friends, Colonel and Mrs Munro and Miss Taylor, when they called on her - a circum stance which was later deemed to be extremely suspicious (72). Wylde claimed that for reasons of economy he did not wish to receive visitors (6- 7). The evidence he initially produced that his daughter was not being secluded came from another visitor, J. Bice Barnes, who, as Wylde 's clerk (7), was not a wholly independent witness, however. Barne s visited the Wyldes on 9 May, eight days after the last visit of Dr Stephen son (60), and although he found Miss Wylde subject to headaches and somewhat paler than before , he did see her two days after his arrival - she was confined with a headache when he arrived - and he denied that he saw anything suspicious in her appearance (227-30). On 6 August, the Wyldes returned to town, and the next day Sir John, when attending a sermon , was told by his fellow-Justice Clerke Burton that rumours were rife in the town that Miss Wylde had been pregnant (1). At this point Wylde was implicated only to the extent that he had wished to conceal his daughter 's pregn ancy (67). Whether he was thought to have procured an abortion for her, or been involved in infanti cide, is unclear. Evidently her appearance led observers to assume that she had either been delivered of a child , or had miscarried . As a consequence of this , Sir John called on the Governor in order to determine whether Miss Wylde would be received at Government House. After some discussion between the Governor and Sir John , and after Lady Frances Cole, the Governor 's

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wife, had been consulted, Sir John 's explanation of Miss Wylde 's gynaecological disorders was accepted and it was agreed between them that Miss Wylde would be received at the next Government House ball. The Governor, however, warned Sir John that, since feeling aga inst Miss Wylde was very strong, there might be unpleasant consequences for her (12- 13). At th is point the scandal had apparently ceased to be the s u bj~ct of discussion in official circles, but the lid had by no means been put on it in society at large, and the Gove rnor claimed that Wylde and his daughter were "shunned" at this time (88). It is in Januar y 1833 that we must pick up the story again, when Sir Lowr y Cole received a letter dated 25 September 1832, marked "Private and Confidential," from the office of the Secretary of State, Lord Goder ich. It gave not ice that rumours had reached the Colonial Office regarding the character of Sir John Wylde and that unless he could clear his name he would be "totally disqualified from mixing in Society" and must be asked to resign as Chief Justice (np, before p. I) . In keeping with the case as a whole, the charges themselves are not spelled out, but it is now clear that the rumours were accusing Sir John Wylde of committing incest with his daughter, of concealing her subsequent pregnancy, and of either inducin g her to miscarry or of arranging for the removal of her newborn child (69). The Governo r, who had been fully aware of the rumours, was now forced to react to them, and an official inquiry began which is the main source for my account of the events of th is case. In the wake of the official inquiry being instituted, Wylde and the Governor began to move on a course which would lead the two of them to clash, provokin g a sensation in the press and compromising the government in the eyes of the public. Wylde professed to be stunned and shocked by what he claimed was his first knowl edge of the rumour s ( 157- 58). He then, however, refused to proceed to clear himself until he had seen a copy of the dispatch and knew the precise nature of the charges laid again st him (163-64). Cole declined, stating that it was not the custom to release copies of dispatches; there followed some two months of politely expressed but implacable opposition between the two men. Wylde refused to conduct any discu ssion except in writing and repeatedly demanded to see a copy of the dispatch, and Cole refused to give him any more information about the substance or origin of the charges. Cole found himself compromised by the persistent refusal to name the unspeakable which marked the case throu ghout its course, and in which the phrase "foul stains" became a metaphor for the doubts cast on Wylde's character. The letter from Goderich, as Cole noted, "merely alluded to" the charges "as a

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subject not fit to be committed to paper" (80). Equally, Wylde felt it impossible to answer charges founded , he claimed, on nothing but unsubstantiated rumour (179) . Eventually Wylde capitulated and wrote to the Secretary of State on 14 May 1833, setting out his claims to innocence and including, as well as letters of support from prominent men in the town, affadavits from his servants and from the staff at the Halfway House as to the innocence of his own and his daughter 's conduct. The affadavits claimed that Miss Wylde was not secluded at the Halfway House and that she behaved there normally and in a healthy manner. Servants claimed that Miss Wylde was a woman of "strictly chaste and virtuous habits " and that Sir John had never behaved in any other way than "what was highly worthy of, and becoming in him, as a Father, a Christ ian, and a Gentleman."!" The female members of the household, including Miss Wylde's lady's maid, Anna Zauderman, formerl y Cunningham, ascribed Miss Wylde's appearance to an illness which caused her to stop menstruating and to have a swollen appearance.P Wylde included the medical evidence of two doctors, James William Fairbridge and Samuel Bailey, who testified that this condition was a common one at the Cape and produced the appearance of pregnancy. 16 Before this, Sir John had resorted to applying to his friends and associates for support, and delivered statements of their belief in his innocence to the Governor on II March (81). Wylde and his supporters then marshalled the forces of public opinion in his favour. Editorials addressing the case in general terms began to appear in April of 1833 in the two major Cape Town newspapers, the South African Commercial Advertiser, a paper notoriou s for its liberal sentiments and reforming zeal, and, in greater detail, in De Zuid-Afrikaan. The latter was a bitter rival of the Advertis er and supported the Dutch slave-owners against the emanicipatory policies of the British Government. In his account of the events to Lord Goderich, Cole accused Wylde or his supporters of giving information to the editors about the proceedings of the case against him "for the purpose of prejudicing the Public Mind in his favour " (86). Three addresses of support for Sir John Wylde, denoun-

14 Deposition of Benjamin Powell, Steward, and Elizabeth Powell, his wife. Public Record Office, London (PRO) CO 48, no 153: 298-99. The same wording was used in the deposition of George Gough , Butler. Ibid, p. 301. 15 PRO , CO 48, no 153: 292, 296. 16 PRO , CO 48, no 153: 324, 326. Despite their assertions , research on the Cape Town medical establishment has not discovered other references to this condition . Personal communication, Harriet Deacon .

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cing the "scandalous rumours" circulating about him, appeared in the press, along with his reply to these. Two were from the Attorneys and Notaries of Cape Town I ? and the third from the general public, which De Zuid-Afrikaan described as being signed by "about 300 of the most respectable Inhabitants" of the city. 18 Throughout the crisis, the press remained strongly behind Wylde, for reasons which I will explore more fully below. Nowhere in the press were the charges actually described ; without access to the confidential government reports, it would be extremely difficult for today's reader to discover the nature of them. When the Cape papers of 1833 were received in Australia, "full of mysterious articles upon the subject of some quarrel between the Governor at the Cape and Sir John Wylde," they perplexed readers , who were unable to decipher the nature of the allegations.!" Among the small elite community of Cape Town, however, the scandal was sufficiently notorious not to require explanation. Letters to the editor, all, apart from one correspondent, in favour of Wylde, were still appearing between April and June; then , on 7 June, a letter appeared in De Zuid-Afrikaan signed "Anglus" which gave a new twist to the situation. It stated that , although Wylde had wished to have an open inquiry instituted, he had been advised to keep silent by "the Highest Authority," thereby implying that the Governor was involved in a cover-up .i" Questions had been raised in the press since April 1833 about the conduct of the Governor - it was considered by De Zuid-Afrikaan that his call for Wylde to clear himself was ill-advised, given his previous acceptance of Wylde's innocence, which had been indicated by his public behaviour towards the Chief Justice since 1831.21 This new development, however, appears to have rattled the Governor badly. He took the questionable step of inserting a reply to the anonymous letter by "Anglus" in the pages of De Zuid-Afrikaan, thus laying himself open to further charges that he was behind the attack on Wylde.22 Criticism of the colonial government and of Cole intens ified, implying that the state was compromised in the eyes of the public and escalating a situation in which the cause of Wylde was already linked to dissatisfactions among the

17

De Zuid-Afrikaan (26 April 1833).

Zuid-Afrikaan (17 May 1833). Wylde was to describe the signatories as comprising "the Property, Interests, and Intelligence of the Settlement"; PRO CO 48, no 153: 194. 19 The Australian (6 September 1833). 20 Zuid-Afrikaan (7 June 1833). 18

21 22

Zuid-Afrikaan (26 April 1833). Letter by "Asmodius," Zuid-Afr ikaan (14 June 1833).

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readership of De Zuid-Afr ikaan about the conduct and poli cies of the Briti sh Go vernment at the Cape.23 Cole, findin g him self caught between the opin ions of the citizens of Cape Town and tho se of his superiors in London, prud ently took more heed of the latter, and sought to defend himself against the charges of covering up Wylde's actions whatever their precise nature. His public entrance into the debate, however, escalated the crisis in confidence in the colonial government amidst a political situation of approaching emancipation which was already fraught with tension. The attacks on the government continued in the press until the end of July. In his final dispatch to Lord Goderich on the matter, dated 24 June 1833, Cole set out his reasons for suspecting Wylde of being involved in conce aling his daughter 's pregnancy or even of committing incest. His accusations centred on Wylde's mysterious retirement to the Halfway House, his failure to have Miss Wylde attended by doctors, the excuses he employed to pre vent thi s, his use of books on midwifery, his desire to have the scandal blow over rather than to have it openl y investig ated, his failure to offer testimony from Mrs Moore, his mother-in-la w, or from his female servant, Mrs Cunning ham.r" and his harnessing of the press to prejudice publi c opinion in his favour (87- 9 I). Neith er here nor anywhere else did Cole question the visit by Dr Stephe nson - the doctor en rout e to New South Wales aboard a conv ict sh ip - to the Wyldes during their time at the Halfway House, perhaps because there was no way of trac ing and questioning him about his pos sible invol vement in the case. This is all the more remarkable as Dr Stephenson's visits to the Wyldes at the Halfw ay House on 27 and 29 April and on I May - coincided with Wylde 's telling Reid that his dau ght er had started menstruatin g again (60). Cole's report concluded by stating that he was unwilling to belie ve the charges of incest - not on the grounds of evidence, but because the y seem ed too horr ific to cont empl ate. Nevertheless, so long as those [charges] regarding his Daughter remain unexplained there must & will attach a strong suspicion against himself & I have no hesitation in stating it as my opinion thatunder these circumstances he ought notto retainthe Situation heholds. (9 1) Wylde, however, remained as Chief Justice of the Cape Colony for another thirtytwo yea rs, retiring from the bench only after a stroke in 1855 .25 The dispatches Zuid-Afrikaan (3 1 May 1833). This contention of Cole's suggests that he was unaware of the content of Wylde's explanation to the Secretary of State in May 1833. 25 DSAB, vol 2: 863. 23

2~

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chronicling the Wylde case left the colony on 10 August 1833, on the same ship that bore the retiring Sir Lowry Cole from the Cape.i" He was replaced by Sir Benjamin D'Urban, who was at pains to demonstrate his belief in Wylde's innocence by treating him warmly and offering him strong support?" A letter to D'Urban from the office of the Secretary of State, which enclosed copies of the material gathered on Wylde, indicates that D'Urban acted on instructions from London. The British Government was desirous of bringing the investigation to a rapid close, not least because of its political implications, to be considered below. It was concluded that the evidence against Wylde himself was insubstantial, that he should be considered acquitted, and that D'Urban should not inquire any further into the case .28 Doubts evidently still remained about Wylde's private conduct, which was considered "indelicate" and bound to arouse suspicions about his family/? The absence of any evidence from Mrs Moore made his vindication "less complete than it might have been .,,3o Wylde, concluded the report, had produced evidence selected by himself which had not been subjected to cross-examination, but this was harder evidence than the unsubstantiated rumours that formed the only basis of the case against him.'! Nevertheless, there were evidently strong political reasons for closing the case on Wylde. The investigation launched by Cole had, in effect, blown up in the government's face by compromising its conduct in the eyes of the public during a time of extreme political tension and even potential rebellion. Cole's replacement, coming when it did, may have been seen as a God-given opportunity to defuse the situation

and allow the scandal to die down. Two years later, in 1835, Jane Wylde married a Royal Navy captain, and left the colony for England.F On its most fundamental level, this is the history of a personal female tragedy. Yet it is precisely this story that is most difficult to tell and that is most marginalized in the historical record. Whether Jane Elizabeth Wylde was in truth suffering from a disease with most unfortunate symptoms, whether she was pregnant, whether she was the victim of

CA GH 23/10 - General Despatches to the Secretary of State, 118 and 232. Diary of William Porter, 100. 28 PRO CO 48, no. 153, Hay to D'Urban (9 November 1833): 1-3 . 29 Hay to D'Urban (9 November 1833),3 . 30 Hay to D'Urban (9 November 1833), 3. 3 1 Hay to D'Urban (9 November 1833): 3. 32 Lady Herschel: Letters from the Cape 1834-1838, ed. Brian Wamer (Cape Town : Friends of the South African Library, 1991): 79. 26 27

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sexual abuse from her father or another, whether she had a secret lover, whether her child was aborted, murdered or spirited away in secret - none of this will probably ever be known. She was never officially questioned by any party, and her lack of testimony is the most clamourous silence characterizing the records of this affair. She remains a shadowy figure within a narrative that became increasingly politicized and concerned not with her personal plight but with the nature of the colonial state.

Body politics: gendered knowledge and the concept of 'delicacy' It is unlikely that the questions about the circumstances of Jane Wylde's possible

pregnancy will ever be answered. What is possible, in revisiting her personal trauma and that of her family, is to ask what this case can tell us about the society in which she lived. Of fundamental importance is an issue that was possibly one reason for Jane Wylde's unfortunate situation becoming a public political scandal at all. This is the notion of gender-specific knowledge , articulated most clearly in this case by the concept of "delicacy." What strikes the modem observer of the Wylde family, just as it struck contemporaries, is the lack of a figure of female authority in a case that was at base about issues of sexual purity and reproduction. The absence of Mrs Wylde and the fact of her misdemeanours - which were widely known at the Cape - is as conspicuous as the failure of another woman (mostly obviously Mrs Moore) to step into her place. Apart from the extreme difficulty of proving or disproving whether incest had taken place between Sir John and his daughter, the Wylde family's failure to make paternity claims against any individual - a practice provided for by Cape Dutch law - was one circumstance that made Sir John vulnerable to the charge of incest. It was possible for charges of seduction to lead to a directive to marry, by court order being passed against the guilty party. The last reported case of marriage by court decree as damages for seduction was tried in 1832, and it was only in 1838 that damages were accorded (in monetary terms only).J3As Sir Lowry Cole noted, even making the name of the father known informally would have defused the charges of incest (75). It may be that the father of Jane Wylde's child was so

33 Herman Robert Hahlo, "Law of Persons and Family Relations: Husband and Wife," in The Union of South Africa: The Development ofits Laws and Constitution, ed. Hahlo & Ellison Kahn (London : Stevens , 1960): 393.

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unacceptable - perh aps in terms of his class or race - that vulnerability to charges of incest was preferable to acknow ledging the pregnancy or, when the rumours first surface d with such virulence, to making publi c the identity of the father of the child. The other factor contributing to the levelling of charges again st Sir John was his unu suall y intimate involvement in the affairs of his daughter. It is to Wylde that ev idence points for arran ging the abortion or delivery that (assumi!lg the fact of the pregnanc y itself) took place. Even if the rumours of pregnancy are discounted, and his version of the affair accepted, his involvement in, and knowledge of, his daughter 's complaints was deeply disturbing to observ ers, particul arly Sir Lowry Cole. Thi s circumstance suggests that there was more to the attacks on Wylde than the obvious reason of horror at a possible case of incest. The contemporary term "delicacy" expressed a range of behavioural patterns central to the definition of what was at this time an increa singly dominant culture of middl e-class gentility in both Britain and its colonial world .l" Centred on notions of control of the self (the emotions and the body), of social interaction and of consumption, such gentility operated to define the limits of class bound aries in the especia lly fluid world of co lonial social mobility. The word could refer to varied aspects of proper behaviour (as Cole's use of it in describing Wylde's acco unt of his relationship with Murray suggests), but in the Wylde case it is most frequently used with regard to gender-spec ific knowledge. Gentility was gendered in crucial ways, demandin g among other precepts that men and women lay claim to di ffering realms of kn owledge, espe cially w ith reference to the body, if th e y

were not to trans gress the rules of delicacy. Sir Lowr y Cole's account , written from memor y in 1833, of his first meeting with Wylde in 1831, durin g which they discussed the issue of whether or not Miss Wylde would be recei ved at Government House , is stron gly informed by this notion of delicacy. Hearing Wylde's explanation of his reasons for retiring with his daughter to the Halfway House, without the help of either a doctor or of female servants, Cole's reaction shows a fundamental sense of his horror at the way in which Wylde had trans gressed his appropriate gender role within the family and cross ed the boundaries between male and female knowledge: I expressed myself in very strong terms (if not with disgust) on the extreme indelicacy of this proceeding, as well as the imprudence of it, considering the nature of his

34 Linda Young, "T he Struggle for Class: The Transmission of Genteel Culture to Early Colonial Austra lia" (doctoral dissertation, Flinders University of South Australia, 1997).

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Daughter's indisposition, adding, that I was surprised he could think of talking to her (which he must have done) on such subjects. (4-5)

Worse still , Wylde offered, as a defence, written declarations by himself, his sons and his clerk, that there was no foundation for the reports in circulation. The testimony of Jane Wylde herself was never offered or solicited by either side (6-7). Cole was even more shocked by this, saying that "in common delicacy" Wylde's sons should be or, even more crucially, should be "supposed" by observers to be "ignorant of the nature of their sister's indisposition" (6-7). Cole told Wylde that he could not blame the public for having such suspicions when he had himself behaved in such an inappropriate manner (9). During the official inquiry in 1833, Cole claimed that Wylde asked him not to pass on his judgement of Wylde's indelicacy of behaviour to Goderich, since, if he did so, Wylde was convinced that he would "be deprived of his situation, and his family be ruined " (78). Cole also attributed Wylde's break with him and his going to the press for support to Cole's censure of his behaviour as a family man and Cole's failure to promise to be discreet on this matter (76) . Private behaviour by men within the domestic sphere was evidently an influence on their character and standing in public life. Wylde's transgression of the barrier between private and publ ic spheres was thus disturbing to the operation of state business beyond the alleged crimes of incest and abortion .P Carole Pateman 's analysis of the operation of the public sphere stresses the way in which women were explicitly pushed out of this domain of the new civil society by contemporary contract theorists. The "separation of civil society from the familial sphere ," she writes, was one that divided "men's reason" from "women's bodies.v'" As Pateman puts it, Within the shelter of domestic life women impose an order, a social pattern , and thus give meaning to the natural world of birth and death and other physical processes, of dirt and raw materials , that is integral to domestic life.' ?

By reason of this, they are "tainted" and cannot transcend their rootedness in a disorderly natural world which is anathema to the ordered cultural world of civil

society." By their separation from this world, men can take their rightful place in Abortion is here referred to as a crime according to the laws of the Cape at this time. Carole Pateman , The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity, 1989): 45. 37 Pateman, The Disorder of Women, 25. 38 Pateman , The Disorder of Women, 25. 35 36

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civil society. Involving himself in the disord er of female reprodu ction, Wylde transgressed the suppose d divisions between political and fami ly life, masc uline and femi nine spheres . If Miss Wylde was pregnant , her father's decision to take th is problem into his own hand s was clearl y ineffective. Historians of abortion in the Ca pe duri ng the co lon ial period have stressed the importance of indigenous fema le knowledge, particu larly of Kho isan or slave-wo men, in bri ngi ng about safe and undetected abort ions for wo men, both black and white'" Ironically, durin g the period under disc uss ion wo men who were of low status in both racial and econom ic term s may have found controlling their own ferti lity eas ier than their more eco nomica lly adva ntaged sisters.i" The sequence of eve nts in the Wylde family, if we acce pt the fact of Jane Wylde 's pregnancy, points to the failure of the family to have acc ess to suc h know ledge. The pregnancy was obviously very far go ne before an abortion was attem pted - and may eve n have gone to full term with the delivery of a living ch ild - since it was the appearance of Jane Wylde that first gave rise to the rumours. Give n the dangers of attempting a termination at suc h a late stage in the pregnancy, Miss Wylde 's survival might possi bly make the fact of a full-term delivery more likely." ! It seems impossible to te ll what beca me of the chi ld that may have been born - whether it was concealed or killed. Wylde's dealings with the Cape medical esta blishment, both forma l and informal, and his access to information through the mechanism of the public library see m to po int to an alienation from sources of fema le know ledge, in particu lar black fema le knowledge , that might have aided in an early termination of the preg nancy and an avoi dance of scandal. With refere nce to acts of abortion or infanticide, it is also important to note that there was more to the attempt of the Wylde family to conceal the pregnancy than the avoi dance of scan dal. Abortion and infa ntici de were severe

39 Helen Bradford, '" Her body, her life' : 150 years of abortion in South Africa" (paper presented at the ' Women and Gender in Southern Africa' Conference, Durban, 199 1): 3, and Patricia Van der Spuy, '" The destruction of her Child' : Infanticide and the Politics of Reproduction at the Cape in the Era of Amelioration," in Van der Spuy, "II. Collection of Discrete Essays with the Common Theme of Gender and Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope with the Focus on the I820s" (upublished Mil. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1993): 172. See also Pamela Scully, Liberating the Family ? Gender and British Slave Emancipation in the Rural Western Cape, South Af rica, 1823-1 853 (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann; Oxford : James Currey; Cape Town: David Philip, 1997). 40 Bradford; " Her body' ," 3. 41

Persona l comm unication by Lee Kleynans and David Savage.

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crimes under the law of the colony, which carried heavy penalties. In 1822 two women - one the daughter of a slaveholder, the other a slave - were sentenced to death for their involvement in an act of infanticide.V

Women's talk and public politics It was the apparently rigid division of public and private spheres and male and

female knowledge that caused the official inquiry to be delayed for two years . It is unclear when precisely Cole heard of the rumours that Sir John had committed incest with his daughter, but he evidently did not choose to act on these rumours until directed to do so by the Secretary of State . Of the initial crisis in 1831, however, he later claimed that the discussions related only to the matter of Jane Wylde's possible pregnancy. It should be borne in mind that both men were describing their own memory of a discussion two years in the past, and attempting to show themselves in the best possible light. What they agreed on, however, is the fact that Cole invoked the distinction between women 's talk and the conduct of state business in his decision not to investigate the Jane Wylde affair - stressing the fundamental difference between the provinces of influence of men and women. In allegedly advising Wylde to stay silent, however, Cole laid the foundation for the later accusations of collu sion on the part of the colonial authorities. Cole claimed to Lord Goderich that he had encouraged Wylde in 1831 to have the matter cleared up in an open manner (14) but denied that Wylde had suggested the matter be brought before the Council. Since the discussion related only to Miss Wylde, Cole stated, it was not a subject for official government inquiry (15). Wylde 's account of this meeting, also made two years later, makes the distinction more clearly. Wylde asserted that he suggested the matter be brought before the Council of Government, but that Cole hotly rejected this. Cole then said , according to Wylde : "Take my advice now, Don't talk to anyone on the Subject, keep yourself quiet [...] when the women have got some new subject to talk of, they will cease to talk of your Daughter" (47). On their discussing the matter again, Cole reiterated that "women must have something to talk about, and that the world was too ready to take such an opportunity, as [Wylde's] want of proper caution had offended"; in obedience to what he called this "advice," said Wylde, "I kept myself perfectly quiet" (49) . In Wylde's view, Cole drew a fundamental distinction between women 's talk , or gossip, and matters that might legitimately involve the

42

Van der Spuy, "The Destruction of her Child," 153.

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attention of the colonial state. Cole's version of events also referred to gossip, albeit more obliquely - "I may have also said that the world was an ill-natured world, and that you could not stop people's mouths if you gave them ground for suspicion.v'? This dichotomy between women's talk and the business of government merits closer investigation. Although I have stressed the separation between public and private, and between male and female spheres of influence, in my account of Wylde's difficulties in dealing with his daughter 's condition, this must not be overstated. It is important to note how this case reveals a more ambiguous and mutually dependent relationship between masculine and feminine social worlds. It also interrogates the separation between public and private spheres, revealing them to be both divided and ultimately inseparable. As Pateman has stated of the classic texts of contract theory, "the meanings of 'private' and 'public ' are mutually interdependent; the 'publ ic' cannot be comprehended in isolation. r''" The case also demonstrates a slightly different point. While women are in theory excluded, the influence of the private on the public sphere is very evident in practice. Despite efforts by both individuals and the press to trivialize the accusations against Wylde as gossip spread by women, women's talk and women 's actions are shown to be of vital importance to the operation of colonial social acceptance. Just as Cole dismissed the rumours surrounding Wylde as unworthy of his attention because they originated in female gossip, so too did the press seek to neutralize the accusations by reducing them to the status of mere women's talk. In an editorial 00 May 1833, De Zuid-Afrikaan hinted that women were the origin of the accusations levelled against Wylde.45 At the end of that month they ran an article entitled "Origin of Female Tittle-Tattle" in which the sin of slander was attributed to the nature of women, and the spread of the rumours concerning Wylde from the Cape to the offices of Downing Street was attributed to "one of the fair sex .,,46 The correspondent "Anglus" also claimed that the rumours "had received their chief support from females.t'"? By reducing the accusations against Wylde to nothing more than female scandal-mongering, their validity could be undercut. The

43 44

45 46 47

Van der Spuy, "The Destruction of her Child," 153. Pateman, Disorder, 3. Zuid-Afr ikaan (3 May 1833). Zuid-Afr ikaan (31 May 1833). Letter by "Anglus," 28 June 1833.

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role of women's gossip in the Wylde affair remained vividl y part of the Cape communit y's memory of the affair in later years.48

Social gatherings and the signification of respectability Even as female gos sip was attacked by representatives of the masculine publi c sphere - the press and the admin istration - women's networks were shown by the scand al to be crucial to the operation of colonial society.t? A number of writers have emphasized the cultural importance of white women 's respectability in the main tenance of colonial communities. Asserting white female chastity and genti lity ofte n formed part of a range of ways in which the colonizers neutral ized potentia l divisions among themselves, underscored thei r distinction from the colonized, and helped them reass ure themselves of their separate identi ty and right to rule .5o As the daughter of the Chief Justice of the Colony, Jane Wylde had an important signifying role in demonstrating the respectability and solidarity of the elite, a role in which she was alread y compromised by the behaviour of her mother. Women's roles went beyond the importance of personal respectability, for they were also fundamental to ritual s of exclusion and inclusion. Within the private sphere, they acted to decide who was allowed access to the ranks of the colonial elite . The importance of the power and influence of women is evident from the very start of the crisis, in the form of the position held by the Governor 's wife , Lad y Frances Cole. Regarding the matter of whether Miss Wylde should be received at Go vernment House, Cole refused to act without first consulting his wife , saying that it was her "feelings and opinions" (8) that were of primary concern in deci ding the question. It was only after consultation with Lady Francis Cole that Sir Lowry informed Wylde that "if Miss Wylde left her card at Government House, she should be invited to the Ball then in contemplation" (12). Both the Governor and his wife playe d an important role in determining whet her individuals would be accepted or rejec ted by polite society. By havi ng Miss Wylde leave her card at Government House and by her being seen pub licly at a ball there, Sir Lowry and

Porter, Diary, 100. On the role of gossip as a regulating force in social life, see Patricia M. Spacks, Gossip (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985): 34. 50 Ann Laura Stoler, "Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Gender, Race and Morality in Colonial Asia," in Gender at the Crossroads ofKnowledge, ed. Michaela di Leonardo (Berkeley: U of California P, 1991): 55- 101; Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault 's 'History ofSexuality ' and the Colonial Order ofThings (Durham NC & London: Duke UP, 1995). 48 49

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Wom en's Talk and th e Colonial St ate

Lady Francis Cole signified to the community at large their acceptance of the innocenc e of the Wyldes. As observers stated, both then and in 1833, the issue of whether or not Cole had person ally advised Wylde to keep silent was in some sense irrele vant - acceptin g the Wyldes through the formal rituals of soc ial life was tantamount to advising their silence.P! The rituals of social life surface again and again in this case a~ important spurs to event s. Just as a ball is involved in the initial 1831 question of social acceptance, so too is the ball to be given in honour of Lady Francis Cole in 1833 another precipitator of crisis, being the event that caused the dispute between Wylde and Cole to shift into the public arena. In April 1833 it was resolved by some gentlemen in Cape Town to give a ball for Lady Francis Cole in, as Cole put it, "a testimony of respect on our approaching departure" from the colony (135-36). Since the offic ial investigation had already been instituted again st Sir John , and he had, as yet, failed to clear himself, Sir Lowry Cole felt that it would be more "manly" in him to make his wishes not to meet publicly with Sir John known to the comm ittee , and accordingly he did so (136-37). He also informed Wylde of this fact. Despite this, Wylde approached the committee himself in an attempt to get his name put on the Subscription List. His stated reasons for doing so make clear the importance of public appearances in the maintenance of respectabil ity and social acceptance, for subscription lists were significant means of signalling social acceptance at the Cape. Whether they involved charitable endeavours, public dinners, the theatre or other concerns, such lists were used as a form of social gesture to divide the respectable from the dishonourable, whether on moral or on economic grounds. That the Chief Justice was not publicl y seen to be involved in an entertainment which was as much about signalling social identit y as eating, drinking and dancing was of sufficient notoriety to provoke the orig inal letter by "Anglus" that so disquieted Sir Lowry Cole. This circumstance gave the case even greater publ icity as both Cole and the members of the Ball Committee sought to refute the charges laid against them by entering the public domain of the press. As the Wylde case demon strates, women were the main actors in the rituals of exclusion and inclusion that marked the boundaries of the genteel world. Their role in "po licing the social borders" was made clear in contemporary conduct book s that placed this responsibility clearl y in the hands of women rather than men. 52 Editorial, Zuid-Afrikaan ( 14 June 1833). Elizabeth Langland, Nobody 's Angels: Middle-Class Women and Domestic Ideology in Victorian Culture (Ithaca NY & London: Cornell UP, 1995): 31-33 . 51

52

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Analyses of colonial societies indicate the especial importance of this role in a "fluid and uncertain colonial world,,53 in which people's social antecedents were often uncertain and wealth and respectability were not unproblematically linked . Constant insecurity about their colonial setting dogged those who laid claim to gentility in both the Cape and in the Australian colonies, for example. While they ostensibly applied the standards of Britain, they were all the time aware that none but the highest ranks would pass muster in metropolitan Society." That members of the colonial administration - of which the Coles and the Wyldes were so obviously a part - could put themselve s beyond the pale of Society was obviously infinitely disturb ing. Penny Russell stresses with reference to Australia the extent to which the boundaries of exclusive "Society" were defined by women within the domestic sphere.P She uses the term "genteel performance" to refer to the manner in which members of the gentry, in particular women, bridged the supposed gap between public and domestic spheres . Women indicated the family's private respectability by their behav iour in public, particularly in exclusive social engagements such as subscription balls. They policed genteel society through the formal system of calling derived from Britain that acted as the most explicit ritual of exclusion and acceptance in both Cape Town and other colonial societies. 56 As Linda Young puts it, "the fiction of the idle domestic woman [and in the Wylde case the female gossip] masked the representational activity of women as the vehicles of establish ing, monitoring and maintaining class difference through the rituals of etiquette.v' ? Women's sociability was inseparable from the maintenance of class position and, in this case, the conduct of political affairs. While it was sneered at by male protagonists in the Wylde affair in order to undercut political opponents, men depended on female networks if they were to negotiate social interaction appropriately. What the Wylde scandal demonstrates clearly is the importance of women 's social respon sibilities in defining the ranks of the respectable , as well as the complexity

Russell, Wish ofDistinction, I. Russell , 'A Wish of Distinction " 61. Russell's account is of Melbourne. See also Young, "The Struggle for Class," which includes case studies of New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia. 55 Russell, 'A Wish ofDistinction " 14. 56 For the English model of this practice, see Leonore Davidoff, The Best Circles: Society, Etiquette and the Season (London: Croome Helm, 1986). 57 Young, "Struggle for Class," 98. 53

54

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Women's Talk and th e Colonial State

of the interconnection between the ostensibly separate public and private spheres . ' Women's talk' was not margina l to the conduct of colonial government, but part of the mechanisms by which the respectable were distinguished from the dishonourable.

The role of the press in the defence of honour If gossip was reduced to the province of women, and seen as an inappropriate form of behaviour for men of honour, what was to be the recourse of the latter in the face of anonymous accusations? This question brings us to consider the nature of the public sphere in Cape Town, more particularly the use that Sir John Wylde, his supporte rs and his opponents made of the press . In 1833 the independent press in the colony was less than ten years old, and, as I noted earlier, was dominated in Cape Town by two newspapers which were at this time in vehement competition with one another. The South African Commercial Advertiser, edited by John Fairbairn, who had been instrumental in winning the fight for a free press against the oppo sition of the colonial government in the preced ing decade, was one, and De Zuid-Afrikaan , edite d at this time by P.A. Brandt, was the other.58 Both papers were pub lished in Englis h and Dutch. The Advertiser took a strong ly liberal line and was supported to a large extent by an urban commercial elite either of English origin or professing loyalty to the British government, despite the paper 's persistent criticism of this institution. By contrast, De Zuid-Afrikaan was founded with the specific purpose of promoti ng Dutch interests and took a strong anti-go vernment line on the issue of impend ing slave emancipation/" As argued above , Cape Town in the 1830s was witness to the elaboratio n of a bourgeois masculine pub lic sphere . It was upon this political culture that white claims for representative government would be based until they came to fruition at mid-cent ury. In the hands of the press, the scandal shifted from one of illicit pregnancy and possi ble incest to one concerned with the cond uct of colonial politics. Yet, while the domain of the body is suppressed, the issue of gender is not absent from a political discourse in which the attribute "manly" signifie d a supreme politica l virtue.P" New models of colonial masculin ity - founded on British models

Watson, The Slave Question, 117. Watson, The Slav e Question, 83. 60 Zuid-Afrikaan editorials (3 1 May 1833 and 14 June 1833) and letter from "T" (14 June 1833). 58 59

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of separa te spheres - were intimately bound up with the ability of a middle-class man to act in the burgeoning proto-pol itical arena at the Cape. This sphere included debates in the press (and the use of petitions and addresses of support which were subsequently published there), public dinners, charitable organizations, public meetings, organized societies and social occasions regulated by subscription. As the nineteenth century progressed, it would include first municipal admin istration and then the long-awaited representative government . At the time of the Wylde affair, this basis for a new gender identity was particularly vulnerable. As the correspondent "Jones v. Bloemhof' put it when protesting the Governor 's action against Wylde: "The only efficient check and support will be found in an AS S EM BLy .,,61

What concerned the editors most - in their agenda of agitating against government autocracy and for political representation - was not so much the nature of the charges levelled against Wylde as the light in which the inquiry on the basis of unsubstantiated rumour would place the colony, and the treatment of Wylde by Cole . If men were to have their careers threatened by "family tittle-tattle," then "no man is longer safe in the station he holds in office, or in society.,,62 The actions of the government in the Wylde case threatened by implication the position of the fledgling masculine public sphere in a world where the colon ial male elite had no formal recognition in the power structure . As the Zuid-Afrikaan put it: No event has occurred within the Colony calling more loudly for an expression of the public feeling generally, than the conduct which has been pursued towards its highest judicial authority.s-

When Wylde found himself at loggerheads with Cole, he turned first to his friends and those who might be supposed to support him, and then - either personally or through others - to the press as a vehicle for influencing public opinion . The case was first mentioned in De Zuid-Afrikaan on 19 April 1833, establishing a precedent for later developments in which this organ took up Wylde's case much more directl y, devoting substantially more space to it in both editorials and correspondence than did its rival. This first editorial in De Zuid-Afrikaan was written in response to the address of support directed to Sir John Wylde by the Advocates of Cape Town, which , the paper claimed, had brought the rumours into the public 61

SACA (I May 1833).

62

Zuid-Afrikaan (26 April 1833). Zuid-Afri kaan (26 April 1833) .

63

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Women 's Talk and the Colonial State

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domain. It asserted that "official purity of character" was a matter of "public interest," especially regarding those who dispensed "public justice" such as Wylde, and that the people were the "watchful guardians" of the good character of public figures and it was important to tread carefully when making such accusations. It went on to pledge the paper's support for Wylde and attacked his accusers, claiming that the rumours had been spread with "personal ends and mot~ves" in mind/" The Advertiser took up the case on 24 April, and Fairbairn, as was his wont, related the current crisis to the reputation of the colony as a whole and its position in the eyes of the world as a community that could lay claim to the right of Representative Government. He feared that observers might draw "unfavourable conclusions respecting the state of Society at the Cape, from a perusal of the documents referring to some slanderous reports affecting the private character of the Chie f Justice.,,65 Fairbairn ended his editorial with this warning: no crime can exceed in atrocity and baseness the secret accusation of an innocent man. [...] For if such offences can be committed , or alleged against innocence with impunity, there is an end of Civil Society.w

In Wylde's response - published in both papers - to the public addresses directed at him, he also saw the efforts in his favour as a vindication of the establishment of an appropriate public sphere at the Cape. Speaking of the inhabitants of Cape Town , he stated that the addresses were , in his words , a "Tribute, on your part , to Public Principle and its lrnmunity.'v? Making similar references, De Zuid-Afrikaan implied that the government, by acting on the anonymous and unproven accusations against Sir John Wylde, had compromised the colony 's status as "a civilized and enlightened society. ,,68 The paper feared that the present trend would be for

64 Zuid-Afr ikaan (19 April 1833). Six years later, in 1839, the new Attorney General , William Porter, also describ ed several people, including Wylde himself, hinting at this notion of a conspiracy - that the rumour s were spread with the specific intent of hounding Wylde to his resignation - but at such a remove of time Porter said that found it impossible to determine the truth of this with any degree of certainty . SAL, MSB 392, William Porter Papers. Diary of William Porter (17 June 1839-16 Novemb er 1839): 100. 65 SA CA (24 April 1833). 66 SA CA (24 April 1833). 67 Zuid-Afrikaan (17 May 1833). 6g Zuid-Afrikaan (26 April 1833).

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the Colonists in general [... to be] slandered, libelled, and misrepresented whenever it suits any particular object. [...] if our society in general deserves that credit which we arc anxious to award to it, we would say that no event has occurred within this Colony calling more loudly for an expression of the public feeling generally, than the conduct which has been pursued towards its highest judicial authority.v?

The improper conduct of politics compromised claims to respectability and political power by the colony at large. Thus, in a link that was made constantly throughout this period, the honour of individuals was presented as the honour of the bourgeois male writ large. While gossip and the rituals of society were forces of regulation in the life of the Cape's elite, there were prescribed mechanisms by which to protect one's reputation, and the uncontrolled spread of scandal was deemed deleterious to the fabric of colonial society. The defamation cases in the Cape Supreme Court indicate that middleclass men were quick to defend slights to their honour in the press, through the mediation of public notaries or, failing these methods, in court. Open discussion via the press was seen as a useful and legitimate manner in which to defuse attacks on both personal and social reputation. While Cole might deplore Wylde's use of the public sphere, the Advertiser, for one, called the behaviour of the public in stating its support of Wylde a "mode of proceeding [...] perfectly consistent with the utmost veneration for the Established Forms of Justice, and is nothing more than the voice of Honor and Humanity."?" The difference between the conduct of Wylde and that of Cole was repeatedly stressed - Wylde had not responded directly or personally to the accusations by means of the press, as Cole had done, but seemed to bow gracefully to the support of public opinion, appearing personally only in his published response to public declarations of support." The manner in which men should make use of the public sphere was delicately defined, and indiscriminate intrusion into this domain was frowned upon. While it was inappropriate for Cole, especially as Governor, to take account of anonymous letters in the press, responding to unsolicited public support by means of the press, as Wylde apparently did, was both acceptable and laudable.

69

Zuid-Afrikaan (26 April 1833).

70

SACA (27 April 1833).

71 Letter from "Asmodius ," Zuid-Afrikaan (14 June 1833). See also letter by "Anglus," ZuidAfrikaan (28 June 1833).

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The Wylde scandal and Cape politics Both papers , typically, saw in the crisis an opportunity to give voice to their political aspirations for the colony. The Advertiser used the crisis, as it had used others, as a vehicle to continue its campaign for administrative reform at the Cape, and proposed that this was a proper time to send a petition to the King, to the effect that the Judges of the Supreme Court of the Cape be placed on the .same footing of independence from government as the Judges in England. Fairbairn went on to question the executive authority held over Judges in the colony, and, finally, to call again for a Legislative Assernbly.F The Wylde case provoked familiar tirades against the Advertiser in De Zuid-Afrikaan, despite the fact that both papers supported Wylde. The editor noted with approval that the Advertiser had published the public addresses in support of Wylde, even though that paper had "but lately supported and vindicated the most arbitrary and despotic public measures" in the colony, probably referring to the controversial amelioration legislation, and De Zuid-Afrikaan used this rare unanimity of feeling between the two papers to argue for universal support for the innocence of the Chief Justice. P The Advertiser's support of Wylde, however, did not go without criticism . One correspondent, "Zootomist," who was a frequent and scathing critic of Fairbairn within the pages of De Zuid-Afrikaan, especially with reference to the Advertiser's views on slavery, emancipation and the treatment of the indigenous population, accused Fairbairn of using the Wylde crisis for his own ends. The sympathy for Wylde, he wrote, has "afforded too good an opportunity to one of your crafty disposition to be neglected [. ..] In this, Sir, be assured you have failed of success. v/" Thus neither newspaper was at all innocent of trying to squeeze political mileage out of the Wylde affair. De Zuid-Afrikaan, however, also used the Wylde case to level attacks against a government with whose policies, in particular regarding emancipation, it was out of sympathy. A dissenting voice in the general acclamation of Wylde, hinting that wider grievances were motivating the writers of De Zuid-Afrikaan, was heard in the edition of 31 May 1833. "Vindex" wrote accusing the supporters of Wylde of being motivated by "party spirit" or anti-government feeling. Even so, he stated, with reference to Cole: "I am well aware that every act of a man who would perpetrate so monstrous a piece of tyranny as the Slave

72

SA CA (1 May 1833).

73

Zuid-Afri kaan (26 April 1833). Zuid-Afrikaan (24 May 1833).

74

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Ordinance is an abomination in the eyes of the many."75 De Zuid-Afrikaan was quick to defend itself against the charge of "party spirit" in an editorial in the same issue, claiming that the supporters of Wylde had been motivated by "manly and independent" feelings, and that many of the signatories of the addresses had been "unconnected with Slave property.t'" The link between Cole's conduct in the Wylde atfair and his political career in the colony as a whole was, however, also made by other writers in De Zuid-Afrikaan, and "Anglus" found his refusal to meet Wylde publicly symptomatic of one "whose blunders and injustices have been but too severely felt in this much injured Colony."?" Although De Zuid-Afrikaan denied that its attacks on the Governor were motivated by party spirit, the far greater space it gave to the Wylde case, compared with the Advertiser, which attacked the accusations levelled at Cole's conduct in an editorial of 4 May 1833,78 is indicative of the way in which sympathy for Wylde's treatment by the colonial government was exploited by disaffected groups to express their opposition to the conduct of the authorities as a whole . The vehement defence of public opinion and the personal attacks against Cole in the press must be read against the background of government autocracy under the threat of social disturbance linked with emancipation. The great stress laid on the importance of the public sphere and the power of publi c opinion must be viewed in the light of the recent actions that Cole had taken to curtail these rights, so bitterly contested in the previous decade , by proh ibiting public meetings. The Wylde affair highlighted the vulnerable role of male colonists in the publ ic sphere at a period in which institutional guarantees of their political aspirations were still lacking. The Zuid-Afrikaan thus railed against "Governors [who] on the most childish and frivolous grounds [.. .] Injure the character and blast the prospects of any over whom they hold authority.r"? As De Zuid-Afrikaan cried, in response to the government's revocation of the notarial licence of Daniel Jacob Cloete, Wylde 's solicitor, over his involvement in the affair, "After what has happened, can any man say that he is safe?,,8o

75

Letter from "Vindex," Zuid-Afr ikaan (31 May 1833).

76

Editorial, Zuid-Afrikaan (31 May 1833).

77 78

Letter from "Anglus," Zuid-Afr ikaan (28 June 1833). SA CA (4 May 1833).

79

Zuid-Afr ikaan (5 July 1833).

80

Zuid-Afr ikaan (5 July 1833).

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Women's Talk and the Colonial State

The fact that De Zuid-Afrikaan took up the case of Wylde against the Governor so much more directly than did the Advertiser, even though the latter also stressed Wylde's innocence, can surely be seen as evidence that the scandal was used by some of the paper's readership as a focus for disaffection relating to the imminent emancipation of the colony's slaves . The unequivocal and widespread support for Wylde, as well as the fact that Cole's involvement in the crisis .was not seen as doing the administration any credit in the eyes of the public, influenced the Secretary of State to discontinue the investigation and allowed the scandal to blow over. The office of the Secretary of State referred to the excitement unhappily prevails in the Colony upon the subject, mixed up as it has been most unnecessarily with political feeling, rendering it highly important that the question should as soon as possible be set at rest. 8 1

As I stated earlier, the removal of Cole himself at this critical juncture may also have defused the situation, for it allowed Wylde to be reinstated in official favour without any loss of prestige on the part of the ruling Governor. Either way, it is clear that the unstable political situation of the colony at the time of the Wylde scandal, as well as the difficulty of obtaining concrete evidence against Wylde, influenced the outcome of the investigation.

Conclusion Despite the rhetoric of the separation of the private and public spheres, the Wylde case shows the interconnection of masculine and feminine worlds and the important place of gender as a structuring principle in the operation of Cape politics . Formal political developments were influenced by a range of informal inclusionary and exclusionary practices centred on the operation of social life in Cape Town. What was stigmatized as "women's talk" played a vital function in marking the limits of respectability, and was central, not peripheral, to decisions about social acceptability. The Wylde case also highlights the emergence of the press and the public sphere as an influence on Cape political life and the manner in which private crises could be harnessed to political agendas to discomfit a colonial government which had not yet accorded formal acceptance to the role of male colonists in Cape public life.

81

PRO CO 48, no 153, Hay to D'Urban, 1.

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What began as salacious gossip whispered among the high society of Cape Town about the appearance of a certain young woman in a prominent family of the city ended with the integrity and judgement of the colonial government being called into questi on. There are many mysteries that continue to shroud this case, in which silences - both deliberate and inadvertent - are such an important aspect. Neverthele ss, despite all these uncertainties and whatever their precise nature might be, it is possible, from this story of the unhappy experiences of Jane Wylde and her father - from this web of anonymous accusation, dissimulation and rumour - to disentangle important threads of insight about the way in which gender roles and notion s of respectabilit y operated in colonial Cape Town society.

WORKS CITED Alford, Katrina. Production of Reproduction? An Economic History of Women in Australia, 1788-

1850 (Melbourne & Oxford: Melbourne UP, 1984). Bank, Andrew. "Liberals and Their Enemies: Racial Ideology at the Cape of Good Hope, 1820 to 1850" (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1995). Bradford, Helen. '" Her body, her life' : 150 years of Abortion in South Africa," paper presented at the " Women and Gender in Southern Africa" conference, Durban, 1991. Calhoun, Craig, cd. Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cam bridge MA & London : MIT Press, 1992). Davidoff, Leonore. The Best Circles: Society, Etiquette and the Season (London: Cressct, 1986). -

- , & Cathe rine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780-

1850 (London: Hutchinson, 1987). Eley, Geoff. "Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century," in Calhoun, cd. Habermas and the Public Sphere, 289-339. Fraser, Nancy. "Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy," in Calhoun, cd. Habermas and the Public Sphere, 109--42. Hahlo, Herman Robert . "Law of Persons and Family Relation s: Husband and Wife," in The Union

of South Afric a: The Development of its Laws and Constitution, cd. Hahlo & Ellison Kahn (London: Stevens, 1960): 392--440. McCarthy, Thomas. " Introduction" to liirgen Habermas, The Structural Transformations of the

Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, tr, Thomas Burger, with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (1962; tr. Cambridge: Polity, 1989): ix-xiv. Pateman, Carole. The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity, 1989).

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11 3

Russell, Penny. 'A Wish of Distinction ': Colonial Gentility and Femininity (Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 1994). Ryan, Mary. "Gender and Public Access: Women's Politics in Nineteenth-Century America" in Calhoun, ed. Habermas and the Public Sphere, 259-88. Scully, Pamela. Liberating the Family? Gender and British Slave Emancipation in the Rural

Western Cape, South Africa, 1823- 1853 (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann; Oxford : James Currey; Cape Town: David Philip, 1997). Spacks, Patricia M. Gossip (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985). Stoler, Ann Laura. "Carnal Know ledge and Imperial Power: Gender, Race and Morality in Colonial Asia," in Gender at the Crossroads ofKnowledge, ed. Micaela di Leonardo (Berkeley: U of California P, 199 1): 55-101.

- -. Race and the Education ofDesire: Foucault s History ofSexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham NC & London: Duke UP, 1995). Van der Spuy, Patricia. '" The destruction of her Child': Infanticide and the Politics of Reproduction at the Cape in the Era of Amelioration," in Van der Spuy, "A Collection of Discrete Essays with the Common Theme of Gender and Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope with the Focus on the I820s" (unpublished MA thesis, University of Cape Town, 1993). Wamer, Brian, ed. Lady Herschel: Leiters from the Cape 1834- 1838 (Cape Town: Friends of the South African Library, 1991). Watson, Robert L. The Slave Question: Liberty and Property in South Africa (Hanover NH & London: UP of New England, 1990).

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I: View from the Garden of George's Halfway House, by Sir Charles D'Oyly (photographic reprint courtesy of the Cape Archives) .

F IGU RE

Notes to Charles D'Oyly's views of Hopeville and the Halfway House The civil servant and amateur artist Sir Charles D'Oyly, who was visiting the Cape from India, produced two images in 1832 referring to the story of the Wyldes. The one shows a "View from the Garden of George's Halfway House" and the other is generall y considered to be a view of the interior of Sir John Wylde's house, Hopeville. The possibility that the young woman playing the harp is Miss Wylde makes the image even more intriguing. A word should be said about the circumstances of the survival of these drawings, discovered during inspection of the originals in the Cape Archives . There is a picture missing from the series which ought to lie between these two images. The caption, however, survives and it indicates that the lost picture was an exterior view of "Hopeville." The picture, however, has been cut out of the original album. So too has the caption that should identify the drawing-room scene as being in the Wylde family home. These are the only missing parts of the album. By numbering his views of the Halfway House, of the

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115

exterior and of the interior of the Wylde house, one after the other in sequence, one can spec ulate that D'Oyly was informed by the circumstances of the scandal, which was rife in the town when these works were produced. The unkno wn person, who, possibly for reasons of decorum , defaced the album, was evidently also aware of the Wylde case . One can surmise that what might seem at face value to be a typical vision of Cape gentility was evidently consid ered potentially salacious, by one observer at least.

F I GUR E

2: Interior of Sir John Wylde's house, Hopeville, by Sir Charles D'O yly

(photographic reprint courtesy of the Cape Archives).

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Science and the Spectacle /Khanako's South Africa, 1936-1937

Ciraj Rassool and Patricia Hayes

T

HE SOCIAL SCIENC ES AND HUMANITIES in South Africa often use the

misleadingly ocular language of visibility and invisibility to write race and gender into history. Rather than search for and identify instances of

' visibility' to fill out the historical picture, this essay looks at visualization itself It seeks to understand the visua l codes and conventions of the scopic attention which emerged during 1936-1937, focused on the anatomical presence in South Africa's main urban areas (Johannesburg and Cape Town) of a woman from the southern Kalahari by the name of IKhanako. I IKhanako, sometimes also transcribed as IGanaku, Anako or Aniko , and known to some as "Ou Fytjie'," was part of a group of over seventy bushmen/ who were studied firstly in the ' field' in a camp at Tweerivieren in the southern Kalahari. Here, in early 1936, the failed farmer and a publicist of bushman causes, Donald Bain, had specially assembled "suitable Bushman examples." The group was then taken to I We wish to thank staff at the Drennan Museum and other archives, as well as Robert Gordon, for assistance in tracking down photographs and artifacts; Nigel Crawhall, Anna Kassie and Sanna Booysen for facilitating interviews; and the University of the Western Cape Arts Faculty, the National Research Foundation and the University of Cologne ACACIA project for their funding assistance. This essay is dedicated to Ouma lUna Rooi, Ouma Keis Brou and Ouma Lena Booysen. 2 In the debate over whether Bushman, San or Khoisan is the most appropriate terminology, we have chosen to use the term buslunen (without capitalizing the first letter) to indicate that it is a category of representation. This usage also follows the convention that has emerged to respect South African sensitivities in the examination of racial categories of colonialism and apartheid. If reference is made here to the term in its original usage, we retain capital letters but in quotation marks. On the other hand, we use ,tKhomani names here (a language now more properly referred to as N/u) beginning with a capital letter - unlike the orthography of the 1930s.

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Johannesburg, where its members were researched and depicted in visual forms while at the bushman camp specially set up at the Empire Exhibition and at the University of the Witwatersrand's research farm at Frankenwald . Finally, fifty-three members of the group were the focus of attention in Cape Town, where they were displayed at the Rosebank showgrounds and where Bain led them on a symbolic march on Parliament (styled elsewhere as a tour through the city centre) as part of the agitation for a bushman reserve. The essay poses questions about what seems to have been a feeding frenzy of the eye by ethnologists, anatomists, photographers and filmmakers, who converged on the group of bushmen as they were assembled and re-assembled by Bain around South Africa. In these moments of hyperfocalization, IKhanako was singled out for special attention at Tweerivieren, in Johannesburg and in Cape Town, first as the daughter of Abraham, or !Gurice, who had been portrayed as the "leader" or "chief' of the group, then as leader herself in Cape Town during Abraham's absence, when she was spoken of as "an intelligent bushwoman" and where she acted as "interpreter." But IKhanako seems to have been singled out visually for the ways in which she was deemed representative , in anatomical terms, of the "female bush type." As a result of all this scopic attention, different layers of visual representations in different media survive : a commercially produced photograph which entered limited public circulation; a variety of photographs in the collections of different institutions, framed in different visual discourses; film footage stored in original form in South Africa's National Film Archive and circulated for different purposes since it was originally shot; and, finally, casts of different parts of her body housed in a medical museum. This essay arises out of our entry as historians into the remnants of this ocularization. We cannot do justice here to all these visual traces and the circuits through which they have passed, and we have restricted ourselves mainly to a discussion of photographs and photographic meanings. But a larger project would seek to understand each visual fragment, whether dormant in drawers and filing cabinets of archives and on the shelves in the backroom storage spaces of the medical museum or brought back to life in contemporary exhibition. Ideally, one would follow up the significat ions that have been attributed to these representations at each stage, their reappropriation at different times, the changes in their meaning, and the new purposes with which they were put to work. Our original aspiration with the present work was to effect a reconstitution and reintegration of the subject, IKhanako, as an act of biographical rehumanization and as part of the reconstruction of a family and possibly a social history. But we have

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beco me aware that in writing this essay and in drawing connections between certain of these visual remn ants and artefacts we are implicated in pu shing these traces into yet more circ uits of spec ularity, spec ulation and consumption ove r whose limits we have little con trol. Moreo ver, the mere reco nstitution of IKhanako 's life throu gh narrative, as an act of recuperation, wou ld not go fur eno ugh towards an und erstanding of the meanin gs, power and violence of the visual representations of her bod y which have been , and continue to be, reproduced. There ex ists an inten se historiographi cal and gender-focused interest in Saartjie Baartman, the "Hottentot Venu s," who was taken from the Cape to be displayed (and studied) in Europe at the end of the eighteenth centu ry. Th is work dwells on late eig hteenth- and earl y nineteenth- century pre-ethnographic forms of imaging and knowledge production .' Saartji e Baartman's pathologist Cuvier, we are reminded, co ntributed to the beginnings of the sciences of the bod y. But little attempt has been made so far to analyse similar phenomena within South Africa itself. In the mod ernizing South Afri ca of the 1930s, for example, such phenomena were potentially of enormo us significance in the discipline of anthropology alone, as they fed into politica l pol icy amid clai ms of the fast-d iminis hing bushman race need ing preservatio n. We shall argue (inter alia) that IKhanako represents a modernization of th e phenomenon of the "Hottentot Venus," in a specific context of the "South Africanizatio n of science.?" Th is develop ment of science fed into a complex of political, social , economic and cultural processes - of early indu strialization and urban ization, related

3 See, for examp le, Stephen Jay Gould, "The Hottentot Venus," Natural History 10 (1982): 2024; Sander Gilman, "Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward and Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth Century Art, Medicine and Literature," Critical Inquiry 12.1 (1985): 204-42; Carmel Schrire, "Native Views of Western Eyes," in Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of the Bushmen, ed. Pippa Skotnes (Cape Town: U of Cape Town 1', 1996): 343- 53; Yvette Abrahams, , " Ambiguity' is my Middle Name: A Research Diary about Sara Bartman, Myself, and Some Other Brown Women" (unpublished paper, University of Cape Town, nd); Yvette Abrahams, " Images of Sara Bartman : Sexuality, Race and Gender in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain," in Nation, Empire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race, ed. Ruth Roaeh Pierson & Nupur Chaudhuri (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1998): 220-36; Zola Maseko (Director), The Life and Times of Sara Baartman (produced by Mail and Guardian TV, South Africa and Dominant 7, Paris, 1998); Z.S. Strother, " Display of the Body Hottentot," in Afri cans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business, ed. Bemth Lindfors (Bloomington: Indiana UP; Cape Town : David Philip, 1999): 1--61 ; see also Elizabeth Elboume, this volume. 4 Saul Dubow, " Human Origins, Race Typology and the ' Other' Raymond Dart," African Studies 55.1 (1996): 1-30; see, more generally, his book Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995).

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processes of peripheralization and rural immiseration and the naming and framing of South Africa's regions into its central and frontier spaces . In short, these were the assertions of a modem South African nation and its metropolitanization within the subcontinent and the world . It remains largely the case that Saartjie Baartman has not been thoroughly historicized within a larger paradigm of the production of images of sidelong steatopygic women which has continued over time in both the 'rnetropoles' and the 'peripheries' of the globe. Beyond the white gaze /black ' gazed' dichotomy so well established in the Baartman studies, what real understanding do we have of the colonial, racial and gendered conditions that have led to the reproduction of such images at different stages in space and time? Within South African scholarship, some attention has begun to be devoted to the events of 1936 and 1937 with which we engage here. Dubow, in his study of race and science in South Africa , has indicated the significance of physical anthropology at this time and the work of Raymond Dart in particular. Hilton White's work on the performance of bushman identity in the late twentieth-century tourist setting of Kagga Kamma (a game-farm outside Ceres) has established historical connections with land dispossession in the Gordonia district in the 1930s, mainly as a result of the proclamation of the Kalahari Gemsbok Park (KGP) in 1931 and consequent experiences of salvation and destitution based on access to patronage.P The work of the anthropologist H.P. Steyn has, in rather primordialist vein, referred to data collected in 1936 at Tweerivieren in the southern Kalahari by Raymond Dart and his colleagues, in his work on ecology and diet. Steyn, writing with his colleague LJ. Botha, has also used the same data to attempt to establish the authenticity of the claim by the Kagga Kamma "bushmen" that they are indeed ethnically bushman, "the last coherent survivors and remnants of the Southern or Cape Bushmen in South Africa ." This ethnological and anthropometric research was drawn on in support of the successful land claim by the Kagga Kamma bushmen, now styled the "Southern Kalahari Bushmen," to the southern region of the KG P. The basis of the land claim was the argument that this land was "their traditional land of which they were dispossessed, the occupation and use of which will enable them to practice their culture and survive as a people .?" 5 Saul Dubow, Scientific Racism and "Human Origins"; Hylton White, In the Tradition ofthe Forefathers : Bushman Traditionality at Kagga Kamma (Cape Town: U of Cape Town P, 1995). 6 H.P. Steyn, "Southern Kalahari San Subsistence Ecology: a Reconstruction ," The South African Archaeological Bulletin 39 (1984): 117-24; L.1. Botha & H.P. Steyn, "Report on the Bush-

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Perhaps more importantly, Robert Gordon has studied the events surrounding the attempt by Donald Bain to "save the last South African Bushman" in 1936-37.7 Gordon's research has also been used in support of the KGP land claim. While the work ofSteyn and Botha, styled as an "ethnological report," has held steadfastly to a primordial notion of an aboriginal San "first people" as the basis for salvation through access to land as a bushman reserve, Gordon has remained critical of the primordial basis of continued attempts to "recuperate the San." None of the existing literature on the region, however, has gone so far as to make connections showing how science and the spectacle worked together. Nor has any of the work attempted to deconstruction both the scientific research and the forms of visual display.''

Encounters with IKhanako There have been four key moments of discovery that enabled us to make connections between different visual traces of IKhanako, making us realize the extent of scopic concentration on a single human being over a short period of time and leading us to begin historicizing the processes of image-making involved in each medium. These moments occurred sequentially in Namibia, in the National Archives in Windhoek , in Cape Town at the studio of the local artist Pippa Skotnes, in the private surroundings of our home in Cape Town around an old family album, and finally in the Matthew Drennan Medical Museum at the University of Cape Town. The cumulative impact of these experiences made us think squarely about the reading of images, what they reveal, what they conceal, and the extent to which they go on to assume lives independent of their moments of creation, devoid of the personal and the particular, with the representat ional taking off into worlds of meaning perhaps not contemplated at their formation. The first encounter with IKhanako's image occurred during research on a Native Commiss ioner who served in Namibia from 1915 until 1947. In "Cocky" Hahn 's men of Kagga Kamma , and their Southern Kalahari Origins," in Land Claim and Submission to the Minister of Land Affairs Subm itted by the Land Claim Committee, the Southern Kalahar i Bushmen (7 August 1995). 7 Robert J Gordon , "Saving the Last South African Bushman : A Spectacular Failure?," Critical Arts 9.2 (1995) : 28-48. 8 Robert 1. Gordon, in Picturing Bushmen, discusses the work of the pseudo-scientist Ernest Cadle and the Denver Africa Expedition, which, while it made its bushmen and African subjects very much a media spectacle, did not in fact put its subjects on show in person to credible scientists and popular audience s. See Gordon, Picturing Bushmen : the Denver Afr ican Expedition of 1925 (Athens : Ohio UP; Cape Town : David Philip; Windhoek : Namibia Scientific Society, 1997).

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reaso nably coherent phot ograph collection, amon g his studio shots of Prime Min ister Jan Smuts at the United Nations in New York to be precise, an incongruous and dis turbing image fluttered out."

FI G U R E

3: Photograph of /Khanako, mounted on card and with swastika inscribed,

in the collection of Native Commissioner Hahn (National Archives of Namibia Accession 450) .

It was a commercially produ ced photograph on card with fancy edges, not strictl y a

postcard and with no photographer acknowledged. We shall henceforth refer to it as "the card." !" The photograph on the card showed a woman who had been placed in

9 This research is published in Patricia Hayes, '" Cocky' Hahn and the ' Black Venus' : the Making of a Native Commissioner in South West Africa, 1915--46," Gender and History 8.3 (November 1996): 364- 92, repr. in Cultures of Empire, ed. Catherine Hall (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000) : 329-55).

10 When we first presented this paper at the "Gender and Colonialism" conference (University of the Western Cape, 1997), we made the decision not to show any of the visual representations we mention. This reluctance arose from the ditlicu lty of recirculating these images to a large public audience. The result was a debate over censorship, with historians arguing inter alia that the sources should be "quoted," even if visual, so that readers/audiences could "judge for themselves." We now include a selection of photographs here. Please note that one survivor of the 1936 Kala-

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the visual discursive pose of the "Hottentot Venus." She was naked, in profile, standing in front of scrub-type bush as if to signify some semi-arid location . In the photograph, the woman's face registered seeming discomfort, even displeasure . Worst of all, there was a white swastika engraved on her buttock . This had not been engraved on her body but on the print, which had been made into a card and apparently put into some kind of circulation . In this case it was for the eyes of a Native Affairs administrator - and possibly his like - to enjoy as a joke , maybe, in the context of rising Nazism in Namibia (formerly the German colon y of South West Africa) in the 1930s. Hahn was firmly anti-Nazi, and this is one reading that could be made of the image. Many quest ions reared their heads when this image surfaced. Why was a "Khoisan" woman subjected to this kind ofextr eme representational abuse, and why were no other "native" African woman (such as the Ovambo whom Hahn governed in northern South West Africa) not subjected to this? Saartjie Baartman has been researched and fought over in the politics of representation. But why this silence surrounding the ongoing castigation of women in modem times in these distorted forms fusing race and gender? Did this neglect have something to do with its taking place in Southern Africa's backyard, rather than in the conventional metropolitan space of Europe? Has Saartjie Baartman been the only one that matters? Why was

this woman daubed with a swastika? Why was Hahn keeping this image tucked away in his otherwise respectable collection? What did this image say to him? What did it a llo w ad m in istrat ive fi gure s such as Hahn to think an d t o do?!! But mo st of

all, the woman on the card - who was she, and how did she come to be in this photograph? This card provoked our enqu iry, and in this essay we begin our attempt to answer these questions . In the administrator Hahn 's own small but revealin g interaction with this image, a connecting factor has been argued between his consumphari anthropom etric research has described some of these photographs as the product of "a camera that rapes" - " 'n kamera wat verkrag" (Duma /Una Rooi, in the course of an interview with Duma lUna Rooi and Duma Keis Brou, Andriesvale Northern Cape, 4 December 2000). Responsibility now rests with the reader: our intention here is not to promote the naive and irresponsible recopying of the images. Regarding photographs and the immediate (sometimes painful) way they give access to the past, we agree with Elizabeth Edwards, who argues that we should "address these problems at the theoretical and intellectual level in addition to our emotional response to images" Edwards et aI., "Discussion 2," in Imaging the Arctic, cd. J.C.H. King & Henrietta Lidchi (London : British Museum P, 1999): 233. II

For a brief discussion of this question, see Hayes, '" Cocky' Hahn," 381-82.

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tion of visuals that represent African women negatively and his readiness to indulge in the abusive conduct which earned him the nickname Shongola (the whip). No matter that anthropology was effecting strict and hierarchical boundaries between "Bushman" and "Bantu." We were beginning to learn something important about ethnographic photography - that, despite its particularization of physical difference, it also had enormous power to genericize in its effects. Thus our first trace of /Khanako, whose name we did not know at this stage, came from the private collection and the private gaze of a figure located on a frontier remote from the South African heartlands. After some detection and enquiry, however, and as networks started piecing together the aetiology of the card, it soon transpired that this woman's image was to be found on multiple sites, some of which were located very centrally. The same photograph had been published in an autobiographical book called The Jackpot Story, by Jack Stodel.F The caption that accompanied the photograph read: "She only answered me in German, so I painted a swastika on her (Namib Desert)." The photograph is credited to Stodel himself It was noticeable that, in this print, not only had a swastika been added to the figure (as in the card) but the boots she wore had been highlighted to resemble Nazi jackboots. Did Jack Stodel take the photograph in Namibia as he indicated? If the figure in the photograph spoke German, did she learn this from living in Namibia? One problem with the caption at this early stage was that the vegetation in the photograph certainly did not resemble any Namib desert landscape. The next encounter took place in the Cape Town studio of the artist Pippa Skotnes, who was preparing material for an exhibition project called Miscast, which sought to contrast colonial representations of the bushmen with the ways in which they represented themselves.P Skotnes had begun to assemble and centralize masses of photographs of bushmen from almost every known source. This collection provided a unique opportunity to have simultaneous access to different photographic images and genres within which numbers of bushmen were represented. With

12 We thank Werner Hillebrecht of the National Library of Namibia, and Wolfram Hartmann of the History Department of the University of Namibia, for taking up the search so effectively and pointing us to the photograph in Stodel's book. See Jack Stodel, The Jackpot Story (Cape Town : Howard Timmins, 1965): 102-103 . 13 See the original proposal by Pippa Skotnes. The exhibition itself, called Miscast: Negotiating Khoisan History and Material Culture, was held at the South African National Gallery from April to October 1996.

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exposure to such a massive collection of photographs of bushmen, assembled perhaps for the first time, the eye is gradually influenced and sensitized to photographic constructions and the possibility of discursive and chronological connections. It became possible to begin the process so strongly urged by Edwards: namely, to "d ig deeper into the structuring of photographic discourse. " 14 Among the folders in a comer of Skotnes's studio were photographs from the Haddon Collection in Cambridge, England .P The folders also included photographs from the Cape Times Collection housed in the South African Librar y in Cape Town. Among the photographs in the Cape Times collection was an image of a group of bushmen taken in a radio studio with Donald Bain and three other white men in suit s. In the front of the group at a microphone was a bushwoman with what looked like a pendant on a chain around her neck. In another photograph in the same folder, a group of bushmen stood in the open surrounded by trees and against a backdrop of mount ains, with a white man in shorts holding a child in his arms . Alongside him was a woman, again with a "pendant" on a chain around her neck . In this photograph her face was full frontal with light falling on her left-hand side. This face, with its part icular bon e structure and its expression, was striking. It was the same face as in the card in Hahn 's collection. Indeed, on closer examination, the card reproduced facing page 103 of Jack Stodel's book also showed a woman with a "pendant" on a chain around her neck .!" Th is moment of read ing the photo graph was one of recognition: at last, the image had become a person. The photo graphs from the Cape Times collection had all been taken in 1937 when Donald Bain had brought a group of bushmen from the so uthern Kalahari to Cape Town to be displayed at the Rosebank showgrounds.

14 Elizabeth Edwards, "Performing Science: Still Photography and the Torres Strait Expedition," in Cambridge and the Torres Strait: Centenary Essays on the 1898 Anthropological Expedition, ed. Anita Herle & Sandra Rouse (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998): 106. 15 The authors had familiarized themselves with this collection in Cambridge in early 1995, noticing that it included photographs allegedly taken by the archaeologist A.J. Goodwin in Bechuanaland and sent on to Cambridge to be part of the big "Images of Man" collection curated in honour of the anthropologist A.c. Haddon. Later, we would realize that these images were from Rosebank, Cape Town, and were taken in 1937.

16 This chain was an important means of enabling us to try to make connections between photographs. Research has shown that while the chain might be the same, the so-called "pendant" differs from photograph to photograph. On the photographs taken at Rosebank and in the radio studio, the pendant is in fact a snuff box given to lKhanako at this time. On the card, however, it might well be a cross.

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Durin g this time he led them on a march on Parliament (Figure 2) in support of the idea of a bushman reserve, which in Bain's view was necessary to preserve the bushmen in the wake of the earlier proclamation of the Kalahari Gemsbok Park. The woman weari ng the chain had a name. She was called /Khanako.

FIGURE 4: The bushmen (with Donald Bain in white shirt) march on Parliamen t, Cape Town 1937 (Cape Times Collec tion, Natio nal Library of South Africa).

A further breakthrough came when, prompted by this finding, we revisited an inherited Rassool family album. It belonged to a late great-aunt, Caro l Rijker, and had been passed along with other albums that comprised a narrativized photo graphic record of her life. The albums - five in all - were large, and meticulou sly set out and annotated. Carol, a Capetonian and a teacher by profession, had spent a vacation in Johann esbu rg between August and October 1936. There she visited Kensington Lake, Springs Min e, Mooi River and Turfontein. But the highli ght of the trip was her visit to the Empire Exhibition. Here she saw models of the growing industrial might of South Africa set alongside a reconstruction of the Zimbabwe Ruins (in the then Sout hern Rhod esia) and a display of live bushmen. Carol Rijker photog raphed each aspect religiously and carefully arranged the photo graphs in an album. On a page given over to her bushman photo graphs, bearing such captions as "The last of

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the Cape Bushmen. Mr Donald Bairi's special charge," "The whole tribe assembled," "Bushman dance of welcome. Specially performed for visitors," "Singing and clapping for the dance, " there was one photograph entitled "Anna the oldest pure bred Bushwoman alive " (see Figure 7 below). The face was recognizably the same as in the card . More pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place as further bits of IKhanako's body materialized in the course of enquiry. By now we had begun to realize the extent to which photographic images laying claim to represent some dehistoricized primordial bushmen were in fact constructed in 1936 and 1937, and drawn from a single group of ;tKhomani (N/u)- and I?Auni-speaking bushmen from the southern Kalahari . The extremely concentrated nature of the focus on this group was made even more apparent by the studies contained in a book edited by Doke and

Rheinallt-Jones.' ? The material for this book was drawn from two volumes of the journal Bantu Studies,ls based on research conducted at Tweerivieren - in the far northern Cape I southern Kalahari at the confluence of the Auob and Nossop Rivers - by anthropologists, anatomists, linguists and others during the course of a Universit y of the Witwatersrand expedition led by the famous Raymond Dart. Matthew Drennan's paper in thi s collection concerned finger mutilation.' ? It was one of the few papers that did not flow directl y from research at Tweeri vieren ; instead, it described the research opportunity afforded to anatomist Drenn an by the visit of fifty-three bushmen , women and children to Cape Town. The bulk of the findings in this short article were based on observation of IKhanako, described as "the leader and interpreter of the group .,,20 The extent of the research and observation of IKhanako was brought home by visits that we made in earl y 1996 to the medical school at the Univer sity of Cape Town. These visits revealed that in 1937 resin casts of IKh anako had been made from plaster-of-Paris moulds, authorized by Drennan, for research and pedagogical purposes. There were casts of her head, hand ,

17 Bushmen ofthe Southern Kalahari, ed. J.D. Rheinallt-Jones & C.M. Doke (Johannesburg : U of the Witwatersrand P, 1937). 18 Bantu Studies 10.4 (1936) and 11.3 (1937), republished with some additional material in Rheinallt-Jones & Dokc, ed. Bushmen of the Southern Kalahari . Also published in these collections were 109 photographic plates, most of which were drawn from photographs taken at Tweerivieren. 19 M.R. Drennan, "Finger Mutilation in the Bushman." Bantu Studies 11.3 (September 1937): 247--49. 20 Drennan, "Finger Mutilation," 247.

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foot, genitalia, and a half-section of the entire body" An attempt had been made to give each piece life-like colouring and tone .

F I GU R E

5: Cast of IKhanako' s hand, made in 1937 and stored in the Matthew

Drennan Medical Museum, University of Cape Town. Photographed by Paul Grendon.

FIG U R E

6: Cast IKhanako's head and shoulders, made in 1937 and stored in the

Matthew Drennan Medical Museum, University of Cape Town. Photograp hed by Paul Grendon .

21 The lifelike quality of these casts suggests that they were made by James Drury, taxidermist and museum modeller at the South African Museum between 1902 and 1942.

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At first, the half-section which shows /Khanako' s body in profile was displayed as an anatomical model inside the medical museum between student carrels and cabinets displaying surgical equipment, foetuses in jars, body parts and plastic models of body parts. This museum, now named after Drennan, was only open to students of medicine. On later vis its, however, /Khanako's bod y profile had been moved to the storeroom. The casts of her head and genitalia still had /Khanako's body hair attached to them from when they were first made. When some of these casts were later displayed at the South African National Gallery during Miscast, the hair on the cast of /Khanako's head was clearly visible, callin g into question the distinction made in the run-up to the exhibition by the curatori al committee between human remains and mere depictions.

Science and spectacles: field research at Tweerivieren The Universit y of the Witwatersrand Expedition which took place in the middle of 1936 was directly bound up with the initiative by Donald Bain to put on display a "camp" of live bushmen at the Empire Exhibition due to be held later that year. Early in 1936, Bain and Dart were already in communication with each other about arrangements and preparation. Bain originally propo sed leaving Cape Town to set up his Kalahari base camp east of Gobabis in South West Africa early in April. There he intended spending three to four months "in close contact" with the bushmen, collecting as many of them as was possible. He envisaged that, in this period , he would be jo ined by a team of scientists, includin g the physical anthropologist Raymond Dart, the linguists C.M. Doke and L.F. Maingard as well as the musicologist P.R. Kirby and possibly Dr Gill of the South African Museum in Cape Town. Bain intended to enlist the assistance and cooperation of these "scientists" to authenticate his efforts so that his bushman camp at the Empire Exhibition would be "as complete in every detail" as possible.V After spending considerable effort seeking approval from the South West Africa administration in Windhoek and the Mini stry of Native Affairs in South Africa to bring forty bushmen from the territory to Johannesburg for the exhibition, Bain was granted permission by the Secretary for South West Africa. The interwar years in Southern Africa had indeed begun to witness the increasing practice of staging exhibitions: following the success of the Bechuanal and "show," Windho ek was

22 Donald Bain to Raymond Dart, 11 February 1936, Raymond Dart Papers, University of the Witwaters rand (hereafter, Dart Papers).

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preparing its own 1936 agricultural show under the auspices of the South West Africa Administration. This was scheduled to include ethnographic displays. Display ing bushmen in particular and primitivity in general had a long metropolitan history, but such exhibitions of native people were only now becoming the mode in this part of the colonial world. One of their objectives was clearly to set out the stages in a continuum of modernization, with the "traditional" throwing "progress" into flattering relief. The problem for Bain, though, became the excessive control sought by the South West Africa Administration, which tended to view him (not altogether fairly) as an outsider and opportunist. Initial permission to export South West Africa bushmen from the territory was made subject to very strict conditions, including the consent of the Native Affairs Department. A few days after permission was granted (by midFebruary, 1936), however, the Department of Native Affairs refused to accept any responsibility for the project, and Bain was informed that the Secretary for Native Affairs could not agree to his proposition. Accordingly, Bain had to look elsewhere for his bushmen.P At the special suggestion of the linguist Dorothea Bleek, Bain went instead to the territory "at the furthest confines of the Union, where it borders on Bechuanaland and South-West Africa" to secure the "best examples of the Bushman type" for public exhibition. As part of her own research, Dorothea Bleek had spent a period of "fieldwork" in this region in 1911. Thus it was to the Southern Kalahari that Bain finally travelled a few months later, where he was joined in July by scientists of the University of the Witwatersrand Expedition under the leadership of Dart.i" The research conducted under the auspices of this expedition confirmed that it was in this precise location that over half of the linguistically and culturally distinct bushmen of the Union of South Africa lived. In Dart's view, they (happily) represented "the relics of the Southern Bushmen once spread from the Kalahari to the Cape, those generally acknowledged to be the purest of the Bushman type." For Dart and his colleagues involved in researching the "native people" of South Africa, through the disciplines of palaeoanthropology, ethnology, lingu istics, native folklore and Bantu languages, the camp constructed by Donald Bain at Tweerivieren at the

23 Secretary for Native Affairs to Secretary for SWA, Cape Town , 12 February 1936; Administrator , Windhoek to Donald Bain , 14 February 1936 (South West Africa Administration, National Archives of Namibia, 978 A89/12).

24 Raymond Dart, "The Hut Distribution, Genealogy and Homogeneity of the I?Auni-ekhomani Bushmen," Bantu Studies 11.3 (September 1937): 159.

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confluence of the Auob and the Nossop rivers pro vided them with the best possible opportunity "for determining by all the means at our dispo sal the racial constitution of thi s anc ient people and to compare the data secured with the osteological and so matometric information acquired [...] during the last fifteen years.,,25 The University of the Witwatersrand party con sisted of eight person s: five professors in different fields - the physical anthropologist Raymond Dart, who head ed the research trip; the lingui st L.F. Maingard; C.M . Doke , P.R. Kirby and I.D. MacCrone - and three assistants. The Universit y gave its wholehearted support to the scheme. The use of the notion ofthe "expedition" brought together (in one category) exploration and research . It self-consciously styled itself in the British anthropological tradition of the expedition, as in the case of Haddon's voyage to the Torres Strait s.i'' Th is was one of the first examples of an institutionally supported, high-

powered (five professors) mult i-discipl inary research excursion in South Africa . As such, it was part of a proce ss of the south-africanization of science, very much in the spirit of the liberal politician Jan Hofme yr 's urgings at the 1929 meeting of the Briti sh Association for the Advancement of Scienc e in Cape Town .i ? It was initiall y contemplated to fly the research team into Bain's camp , and

ass istance was sought from the state in view of its alleged scientific importance.f In the event , with no state support forthcomin g, Dart turned instead to the Automobile Asso ciation. Armed with detailed information on the road conditions of every stage of the jo urney, from Johannesbu rg to Tweerivieren via Wolmaranstad, Kurum an and Witdraai, Dart and his colleagues set about assembling the provisions and eq uipment requi red for their safari . The professors took pain s to ensure their comfort in the field, with sufficient stretch er-beds, washbasins and four blank ets per person loaded

25 Dart, "The Hut Distribution," 159. The work of Bain and his colleagues at the University of the Witwatersrand took place in the setting of the Department of Bantu Studies, which offered deg ree and dipl oma courses in Bantu languages, ethnology, native law and administration, physical anth ropology, primitive sociology and social psychology. Education in these disciplines was geared toward s produ cing knowled ge of the native mind and body, and native culture and language required for native administrators, anthropologists etc. Much of their research was publi shed in the University of the Witwatersrand jo urnal, Bantu Studies, devot ed to " the scientific study of Bantu , Hottentot and Bushman." 26 On Hadd on ' s ' expedition' to the Torre s Strait, see Cambridge and the Torres Strait: Centenary Essays on the 1898 Anthropological Expedition, ed. Anita Herle & Sandra Rouse (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998). 27 Saul Dubow, SCientific Racism, 13. 28

Dart to O. Pirow (Minister of Defence), 4 May 1936, Dart Papers.

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on to the expeditionary vehicle, not to mention (failing Dr Galloway) the "hefty student (and or a native)" to help with the cars, photography and measurements. As Dart assured Bain, We have taken note of the suggested requirements relative to blankets , pillows, mattresses and stretchers, as well as underwear, pullovers, shirts, shorts, socks, etc [. ..] We will bring our own brands of alcohol [...] but you had better have a couple of bottles of whiskey in addit ion.

The actual equipment allocated for the expedition included a dictaphone and other recording instruments, "60 Ib anthropology instrts," cinematographic apparatus, six archaeo logical specimen cases and sundry packing materials . Lighting and magnesium "equipment" for photography also formed part of their inventory./? In the midst ofDart 's preparations, Bain was sending the professor photographic film of those bushmen he had begun assembling in order for Dart to assess their suitability as bushmen "specimens." Bain expressed his excitement over these subjects: "I did not believe that so pure a type existed.t'? The Wits expedition was claimed to be the "most unique undertaking in the field of scientific expeditions that has so far been placed on record in the academic world." With their research activities at Tweerivieren described as a "laboratory in the desert," equipment making up this near-complete laboratory was taken to the desert in a specially constructed lorry. It was intended to record voices and tunes "in permanent form," while measuring instruments to record physical characteristics, and plaster and casting equipment were brought to make casts and moulds of facial features .'! On this field trip, therefore , the photography, recording equipment and casting of faces were to be deployed as mimetic devices to record body and voice, language and phys iognomy. The importance of such "recordings" lies in the way in which an "understanding of the copy becomes a foundation for a deeply serious reality,,,32 in this case scientific . These forms of documentation, "resolutely realist,"33 were key discursive elements in the assembling of "evidence" concerning the supposed distinctiveness and the ancientness of the disparate group which had been gathered together for the scientists .

31

Dart to Bain, 28 May 1936; 5 June 1936, Dart Papers. Bain to Dart, nd (c. May 1936), Dart Papers. Rand Daily Mail (8 July 1936).

32

Edwards, "Performing science," 106.

33

Edward s, "Performing science," 106.

29

30

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The camp itself had been specially set up by Donald Bain, a Kalahari "authority" and "leader of previous expeditions into unchartered wastes." He had set up a few shelters and put up a tent for himself, and began to draw people to his camp by enticing them with game. Here, with rations of meat and water handed out by Bain, they experienced what Van Buskirk later called "the final realization of 'Bushman heaven'," the "happy hunting grounds of their dreams." In this context, Bain set about preparing the bushmen for the arrival of the scientists . Bain himself had made a special trip to Ghanzi in Bechuanaland to obtain skin mantles and ornaments to ensure that the bushmen would be dressed "correctly." "Old Patriarch" Abraham had been enlisted to act as recruiter and organizer and, in a very short time, "Bushmen began to appear from all four comers of the Great Kalahari." For Bain, the big problem now was "the sorting out process" of extracting "the best specimens" from a growing group, the majority of whom he pronounced "useless from my point of view." But those that he had begun to select and send photographs of to Dart he judged to be "a far more desirable type, for Exhibition purposes, than the Aron or, for that matter, any of the other tribes." In Bain's mind, the scientific research would be a classificatory intervention in the lives of this hybrid group which would ensure the production of authenticated bushmen for the Empire Exhibition ," The expedition itself set off from Johannesburg on 23 June 1936 in three cars and one lorry. At Kuruman, preparations were made for desert conditions. Large drums of water and petrol were taken on board, radiators were covered with gauze, and the cars were carefully inspected and equipped with new tyres. Once they arrived at Bain's camp, "the whole place took on the appearance of a great outdoor scientific laboratory." James van Buskirk, a member of the Royal Geographical Society, acted as the official publicist of the field trip, and the Rand Daily Mail carried his regular reports of the research activities. Van Buskirk 's key position allowed him to view the unfolding research and document its progress as a journal ist. His first report was prefaced romantically: This preliminary account of camp activities is being written at the expedition base headquarters (Bain Camp) in the heart of the Kalahari and will be carried over the dunes to the nearest post by a special camel patrol furnished through the courtesy of the Desert Police.' >

34

35

Rand Daily Mail (8 July 1936); Bain to Dart, 26 May 1936, Dart Papers. Rand Daily Mail (8 July 1936).

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Van Buskirk played another key role in the expedition, that of anthropometric photographer. Thus he was not only an observer of the expedition's research, he was also a participant. The "scientific" research involved the collection and compilation of masses of empirical detail. Work began with a census of names of the approximately eighty bushmen who had been assembled. Thereafter, Dart and his assistant John Maingard set about measuring the physical characteristics of the bushmen, while Kirby recorded voices on his portable dictaphone, the phonetics of bushman languages were written up, and the methods of making poison for arrows were recorded. The presence of up to four generations in a single family at the camp made it possible for studies to be extended into consideration of heredity and the inheritance of physical characteristics - in effect, officially mapping genealogies of the group members. After two weeks, with the camp "a constant hive of industry" on a daily basis, the bushmen had been "worked to a standstill from every scientific angle ."36 For the duration of the research at the camp, the bushmen were made to wear identification tags, "little cardboard dog tags" placed around their necks as soon as their physical measurements were recorded. The tag was designed to carry the complete history of each bushman, which could be added to at every stage of the research by each of the professors . They were seen as important to the reconciliation of data collected by different "departments" of the expedition in the absence of constant roll-calls. In order to convince the bushmen of the importance of these tags, and to prevent any tampering or swapping, a considerable amount of ceremony was attached to the actual tying of these tags around the bushmen's necks, as a trick, in order to make them seem to be "a distinct badge of individual honour." In addition, each bushman adult and child was accorded a specimen number.i" A medical laboratory was set up in a large grass-walled enclosure at the centre of the camp. Here, medical examinations were conducted, with scars or marks recorded, and individuals checked for any illness or disease. Any disease identified was followed up by daily morning treatment and the dispensing of drugs . Indeed, it was thought that these medical interventions would be reflected in the physical development of the bushmen for many years. More importantly, it was here that physical anthropological and anthropometric studies were conducted.l" Raymond 36

Rand Daily Mail (14 July 1936).

37

Rand Daily Mail(14 July 1936).

For a discussion of the ' scientific results ' of this research, see Raymond Dart, "The Physical Characters of the I?Auni-tKhomani Bushmen ," in BantuStudies 11.3 (September 1937): 175-246. 3M

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Dart and his assistant, Maingard, the professor's son, conducted detailed physical measurements of the bushmen, recording the data collected on the tags worn. From this data, each subject was then placed into specimen categories according to degree of purity. Detailed data was collected on facial form, "constitution" and features, bodily habitus and stature, skin and eye colour and hair distribution, the limbs and the "mammae." Considerable attention was devoted to the external genitalia, bodily posture and "steatopygy." It was after this research that the subject was passed on to the face-casting section. One of the most important tasks for the expedition was the production of face masks. The art of making face masks had been acquired by the University of the Witwatersrand through Raymond Dart's participation in the Italian Cape-to-Cairo scientific expedition of 1930. This expedition had vaunted face masks as an important part of the methodology of physical anthropology, under the guiding genius of Professor Lidio Cipriani, who hailed from the University of Florence. Dart now made this methodology peculiarly his own, replacing Cipriani's piece-moulding technique with a whole-face waste-moulding technique. These techniques, which produced the "positive" masks, were completed in the laboratory; the whole-face "negatives" were taken in the field." Under the care of assistants Williams and Hall, Abraham, induced to provide the first "negative," was placed on a long table with reeds inserted into his nostrils to allow him to breathe. An application of damp plaster of Paris was applied to cover his face, allowed to dry, and then removed along with facial hair. Following Abraham, masks were made of all the subjects researched at Bain's camp.t'' Another central component of the physical anthropology was photography. James van Buskirk was responsible for photographing a series of anthropometric studies of adult and child female and male "facial types," in full face and in profile, accompanied by detailed phenotypical descriptions. These were only a small section of the photographs he was required to take. Each day, after breakfast, once Dart as head of the expedition detailed the daily duties so that "there will be plenty of Bush-

39 "Guide to the Raymond Dart Gallery of African Faces," Hunterian Museum, Department of Anatomy, Medical School, University of the Witwatersrand, 1992. 40 Rand Daily Mail (8 July 1936). Visitors to the Hunterian Museum at the Medical School of the University of the Witwatersrand will be struck by a display of many of the masks made in Bain's Camp at Tweerivieren in 1936. They form the core of the Raymond Dart Gallery of African Faces. See "Guide to the Raymond Dart Gallery of African Faces," Hunterian Museum, Department of Anatomy, Medical School, University of the Witwatersrand, 1992.

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men to go around," Van Buskirk took instructions from the professors on his photographic duties for the day. By the end of the research expedition, Van Buskirk had photographed the bushmen "in every conceivable position."! It will come as no surprise that Van Buskirk made photographic studies of female genitalia and steatopygia. He was called upon to photograph the different varieties of female labia identified by the physical examinations and according to criteria set out in an earlier study by Drury and Drennan.f For this purpose he had two female subjects face the camera in a squatting position to expose their genitalia to the lens . The buttocks were the focus of a series of shots offemales from infant to adult, who were made to pose sideways. The commentaries accompanying the pub lished plates detailed such phenomena as "the several stages in the ontogenetic development of steatopygia of the first type," suggesting how the typological process was heightened by thi s form of photography. Reproduced images of genitals and buttocks served to confirm supposed racial difference. The scienticity of these racial "facts" was borne out by the availability of these photographic plates, in loose copy, only to scientists and research Iibraries .v' It is here that we can begin to appreciate the "multiple role of visual information, visual relationships and visual analysis":44 such photographs constitute the scientific expedition's metanarrative of bushman female sexuality. This focus on the buttocks led, as Van Buskirk relates , to "a rather amusing incident." He noted how all the bushman subjects wanted to go to Johannesburg to the Empire Exhibition, and explained: after the medical men had made an examination of this particular growth, and had, of course, done much talking about its origin, the Bushmen somehow got the idea that only those with a highly steatopygious growth would be allowed to go to Johannesburg.

According to Van Buskirk, this resulted in "a considerable amount ofjealousy in the hearts of the less fortunate sisters of the community," and caused them to "steal off from their own camp [...] and knock timidly on the door of Mr Bain's hut, asking

41

Rand Daily Mail (14 July 1936).

See James Drury & Matthew Drennan, 'T he Pudendal Parts of the South African Bush Race," Medical Journal a/South Africa 22 (November 1926): 113-17. 43 See photographs contained in plates 75, 76, 93 and 94 of Bantu Studies 11.3 (September 1937), repr. in Rheinallt-Jones & Doke, Bushmen a/the Southern Kalaha ri. 44 Edwards, "Performing Science," 106. 42

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perm ission to show him personally their particular development, and attempting to find out from him if it was big enough to allow them to come to the Exhibition.,,45 Durin g the field trip, photo graphs of an ethnographic nature were also taken by the linguist Clement Doke. These were primarily sequences which sought to present staged portraits of the hunter and the gatherer, to arrange the bushmen at Tweerivieren into family groups and generations, and to depict social rituals and the use of cultural objects. Still shots derived from cine-film footage of dancing, most likely shot by Hewitt of the South African Railways, were also developed . /Khanako was the focus of some attent ion at Tweerivieren. Styled as No.5 , female , /Khanako (or /ganaku) was depicted as a member of a family group, with the fam ily represe nted verbally and photographically as the major un it of social organization. Accordingly, she was the daughter of Abra ham, No.4, and sister of Malxas , No.1 . Co nnections were made to research undertaken twenty-five years previously by Dorothea Bleek . It was also estab lished that her mother was Khora, first wife of Abraham. In this "close-knit" family, it is noted that /Khanako had five daughters: No. 51, female, Ikeri-Ikeri and No. 7, female, Marta, young women, her daughters by a bushman booi, No.6 female, klein Ikhanako (or klein Iganaku) and No.9 female, kuskai, young girls, her daughters by an unnamed Hottentot, and No. 8 female lena, her daughter by an unnamed European.

All this information sought to establish the degree of bushman purity. The potentially interesting data collected here, hint ing at a massive hybridit y in a highl y fluid region , was left unexplored by the research party." Other photo graphs depicted

45

Rand Daily Mail (\ 5 July 1936).

46

It is no surprise that lKeri-lKcri, daughter of lKhanako, identified as "pure bushman," was

the focus of attention in the anatomy department at Wits. This took place in life and in death. There was a life mask (kal 51) made at Tweerivieren along with other anatomical representations. Her body re-entered the research world of the Anatomy Department at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1952 after her death. There she was cast in bronze and in this pathography her missing finger joi nts on her left hand, genitalia and steatopygia were made noticeable to student observers. Later, her body was dissected before an anatomy class; a visit in 1996 showed that her skeleton, meant to be in storage as item A 43 in the Dart Collection, had gone missing. On the procurement, study and storage of human remains in South African institutions (though for an earlier period), see Martin Legassick & Ciraj Rassool, Skeletons in the Cupboard: South African Museums and the Trade in Human Remains 1907- 1917 (Cape Town & Kimberley: South African Museum and MeGregor Museum, 2000).

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/Khanako as a gatherer and carrier of food and water. At Tweerivieren, the detailed descriptions of every aspect of her anatomy were not reproduced in photographs. The ethnographic encounter at Tweerivieren was not a one-sided affair. By the time they reached Johannesburg, the bushmen were imitating the professors through the medium of dance. As Van Buskirk indulgently wrote: Much of the Bushman 's time is spent in play, and mimicry is his greatest accomplishment. Seated round the camp fire last night we were treated to a representation of many of the actions of the professors in the desert. The taking of physical measurements by Professor Raymond A. Dart and Dr John Mainguard furnish most of the inspiration for these impromptu Bushman shows. Klein Anico [sic], one of the most brilliant of the younger members of the group, acted the part of Dr. Mainguard, and with a broken twig to take the plaee of a rule or measuring stick, would carefully measure the nose, the chin, the eyes and the forehead of various other individuals . After each measurement she would call out an indistinguishable utterance in imitation of the voice of the doctor to a companion seated on a box a short distance away, who pretended to write the information on a piece of paper in perfect imitation of Professor Dart."

/Khanako' s daughter Klein /Khanako and fellow performers counterpose the expedition 's "mini-rituals of scienticity,"48 centred on mimetic techniques, with what appears to be mimicry. But this interpretation rests on whether we see the evanescent , transient performance - "imitations" which were to some extent documented - as miming or mimetic. If the latter, then Klein /Khanako and others were performing a double mimesis. Especially because of the presence of children at such a performance, it is conceivable that it translated the expedition's actions into evidence for a cross-generational audience where experiences and relationships were "explained" and stored in the memory to be copied and re-performed on later occasions. The question is, what was Van Buskirk seeing and not seeing? Indeed, this enables us to examine publicity material, authored by Bain and accompanying the Empire Exhibition , in a different light. Publicity photographs in a brochure depicted /Khanako, her father Abraham and other individuals in various dancing poses, represented as "the welcome dance," or, with irony, "the origin ofthe "Charleston'i'"" It is not unlikely that amid the dances witnessed by ExhibitionRand Daily Mail (17 August 1936). Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (New York & London: Routledge, (993) : 199, cited in Edwards, "Performing Science," 113. 49 Bushman Reserve (brochure issued at the Empire Exhibition; Johannesburg: Tillet, 1936). 47

4R

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goers, unbeknown to them, were the very gestures that went beyond parody to a mimesis of specularization in which (for a brief moment) the relations of representation were possibly being subverted.

From Johannesburg to Cape Town: science, empire and preservation The University of the Witwatersrand continued its institutional research commitment to Bain 's bushmen for the duration of their stay in Johannesburg at the Empire Exhibition. In addition to promising daily medical examinations of all the bushmen by Dart himself (or his substitute), the university made its research farm at Frankenwald available for their accommodation . The presence of the bushmen at Frankenwald between September 1936 and January 1937 afforded the original members of the expedition a chance to conduct further "field research" under even more "controlled conditions.P" as well as an opportunity for other researchers such as Dorothea Bleek to meet Bairi's bushmen. It also gave another noted Kimberley photographer, Alfred Martin Duggan-Cronin, the opportun ity to conduct his own photographic studies of the group. These included portrait-type and anthropometric shots, all seemingly artist ic in their construction and documentary in their portrayal. It was the experienced Duggan-Cronin more than any other photographer who most effectively portrayed Bairi's bushmen as "authentically" primitive. These images seem intended to show - as if naturally - the outlines of bodies, adornment and posture. While it is plausible to suggest, as Paul Landau does, that in the photographs the personalities of individuals seem to ' j ump from the page," as a genre of photography, Duggan-Cronin's pictures of "Bain's Bushmen" sought to construct racial "types" through making subjects into specimens.e' 50 See Elizabeth Edwards, "Ordering Others: Photographies, Anthropologies and Taxonom ies," in In Visible Light : Photography and Classification in Art, Science and The Everyday, ed. Chrissie lies & Russell Roberts (Oxford: Museum of Modem Art, 1997): 58. 51 Paul Landau, " With Camera and Gun in Southern Africa: Inventing the Image of Bushmen c. 1880 to 1935" in Skotnes, ed. Miscast, 139; Alfred M. Duggan- Cronin, The Bushman Tribes of Southern Afr ica (Kimberley: Alexander McGregor Museum, 1942). Landau indeed acknowledges the making of "specimens." We should note Edwards' point that, generally, aesthetic and individualistic qualities ("personality") in such ethnographic or anthropological photographs usually had a commerc ial purpose, being intended for distribution to various markets. See Edwards et al., "Discussion 2," 233. In Duggan-Cronin' s case, however, the motives for aestheticizing African subj ects were more complex , as he depended on administrative grants and assignments, and on elite patronage and institutional support, rather than on purely commercial sales of his pictures.

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By the time the bushmen were brought to Johannesburg for the Empire Exhibition, their public displays as the second most popular exhibit became increasingly associated with a paradigm of preservation. This was articulated as "saving the Bushmen from Extinction," and tied in with Bain's idea of establishing a bushman reserve, along the lines of a game reserve, which he felt would prevent their "assured extinction.t'V Like salvage paradigms elsewhere, this bid to ensure a future necessarily placed the bushmen "in a present-becoming-past'V In addition, the connected activities of bushman preservation, live bushman display and scientific research were all premissed on the idea of a pure bushman who was racially distinct . For Raymond Dart and his colleagues, research at Tweerivieren and Frankenwald enab led the physical characteristics of the bushmen to be compared to the fossil record whose analysis was making Dart and his department farnous.t" Dart and his fellow expedition members looked forward to the establishment of "one or more Bushman Reserves in Southern Africa, where the remnants of this fascinating human group of Bush peoples might be preserved for generations to come.,,55 In support of this demand for a reserve, Bain took fifty-five members of the same group to Cape Town in 1937. Senator Thomas Boydell unsuccessfully took up the struggle for "preservation" by formating a Committee to Promote the Preservation of the Union's Bushmen, bringing together politicians with prominent scientists from the University of Cape Town and the South African Museum such as Drennan and Edwin Gill. The group's "march" on Parliament with Bain. 56 had attracted Boydell 's attention. The bushman march had constituted part of an itinerary which took in a vis it to the sea, though their main purpose in Cape Town was to be displayed in Rosebank.V The presence of the bushmen in Cape Town afforded Bain the opportunity to take /Khanako and four members of her family to the South African Museum, where

52

See Gordon , "Saving the Last South African Bushman," 29.

James Clifford , "On Ethnographic Allegory," in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. James Clifford & George E. Marcus (Berkeley: U of California P, 1986): 44, cited in Edwards , "Performing Science," 110. 53

54 55

See Dubow, SCientific Racism. Dart, "The Hut Distribution ," 167.

56 On the symbolism of this "march" organized by Bain, see Robert J. Gordon, '" Bain's Bushmen ' : Scenes at the Empire Exhibition, 1936," in Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business, ed. Bernth Lindfors (Bloomington: Indiana UP; Cape Town: David Philip, 1999): 283. 57 Thomas Boydell, "My Luck 's Still In ": With More Spotlights on General Smuts (Cape Town : Stewart , 1948).

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they participated in "an interesting scientific experiment. " lKhanako and her family had been selected to pose in the Museum 's bushman cast room, so that, as "living Bushmen," they could be compared with casts made earlier by the famous modeller James Drury. This experiment was conducted amid claims in the press that the bushmen were not authenti c.58

FIGURE 7: Thobaku, wife of Old Abraham, and /Khanako, daughter of Old Abrah am (photographed by Alfred Martin Duggan- Cronin at Frankenwald, Johannesburg, 3 January 1937).

Moreo ver, it was here in Cape Town that the Edinburgh-trained anatomist Matthew Drennan undertook his research on finger mutilation and more. In addition, Drennan arranged for specific life casts to be made. From the quality of the casts, it is most likely that they were made by the Drennan's collaborator of long standing, Drury, despite the latter 's age and ill-health at that time.l? There is no doubt that

The Cape Argus (10 May 1937). For a description of Drury' s project to produce casts of bushmen, see Walter Rose, Bushman, Whale and Dinosaur (Cape Town: Howard Timmins, 1961), ch. 7. For an assessment of the casting project of the South African Museum in which Drury played a central role, see Patricia 5K

59

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these casts of /Khanako were prized : she was certainly regarded as a good bushman "specimen." While lKhanako was in Cape Town, having parts of the "empirical edifice" of her body'? replicated in the Medical School, she and other members of the group were "photographed, measured and fiddled with.,,61 The latter activity took place under the supervision of Drennan, who was, according to his assistant, fascinated by her "Mona Lisa smile.,,62 We have as yet found no traces of such photographs accredited to Drennan in the Medical School.

Science, fieldwork and the bushmen in 1936 In Philip Tobias' survey of Kalahari ethnographic research. v' a subject that Dubow also touches on in passing, researchers are presented as going "into the field ." We have found that the safari to Tweeriv ieren by Dart's group, and the research they conducted there , have been uncritically read as an instance of "fieldwork." The staged nature of Bain's camp and its regimen as a "laboratory in the desert " in fact raise a number of issues about what is and what was implicitly accepted as fieldwork . Do we think of "fieldwork" in the 1990s as research encounters taking place in more "natural" settings, in locations where the researcher is not necessarily in control? These encounters in 1936 with tKhomani (N/u) and /?Auni-speakers took place in staged settings, disciplined settings - and were more likely to reinforce preformed opinions than to challenge them. Also, in this fieldwork camp, there seems to have been a high degree of control over the subjects of research , almost a spatial-power relationship. The placement of these tKhomani (N/u) and /?Auni-speakers in the fieldwork camp under the eyes of Bain as supervisor also had overtones of a future bushman reserve, where enclosure meant the protection of the primitive, "a sanctuary and a retreat.,,64 A process of rendering them harmless, of infantilization through paternalism, ensured that twin processes of scientific research and producing a preservation discourse were happen-

Davison, "Human Subjects as Museum Objects: A Project to Make Life-Casts of ' Bushmen' and ' Hottentots' , 1907-1924," Annals ofthe South African Museum 102.5 (February 1993). 60 Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1995). 61 OJ. Coetzee, Living with the Dead (Cape Town: Coetzee & Sartorius, 1953): 49. 62

Coetzee , Living with the Dead, 49.

Philip Tobias , "Studies of Bushmen in the Kalahari," South African Journal of Science 57.8 (August 1961): 205-206, 217. 64 Donald "Kalahari" Bain, "The Kalahari Bushmen," in Bushman Reserve (brochure , 1936). 63

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ing simultaneously. This time it was not a colonial state ensuring a captive peasantry, as has been argued for other parts of Africa; what was being sought here was a captive "primitivity." Peter Pels, in his use of the notion of the "safari method of ethnography" to analyse East African administrator--ethnographers, has introduced a welcome new emphasis on the processes of field-work. Particularly apposite in the Tweerivieren case is Pels's conceptualization of the ethnographic pre-terrain, which explores the trajectories from which ethnographers enter "the field."65 The obscuring of such processes in most South African historiography betrays many a hidden agenda, and strong possibilities that entire field research undertakings may not have been as orderly or deeply investigative as later publications would make them appear.P" The extent to which Tweerivieren (which might just as easily have been Gobabis, had the South West Africa administration given its permission) is a staged ethnography is worthy of remark. It set itself up in the Haddon tradition, which claimed to have revolutionized British anthropology and to have demonstrated that "anthropologists who did their own ethnographic research could take the rigorous scientific standards of the laboratory into the field."67 But despite its claims to being an "expedition," the Witwatersrand safari ended upon arrival at the camp; what then began was a method of ethnography that was distinctly non-exploratory. Everything had been prepared by Bain. In the southern Kalahari, it would seem, there was so little administrative contact with marginal groups that a facilitator such as Bain was deemed necessary to effect what was hailed as very serious ethnography for its time. The conjuncture of research and exhibiting in the contexts of Johannesburg and Cape Town in 1936-37 is even more problematical, and leads us to suggest that "science" and "spectacle" are two sides of the same coin. The exhibiting of the bushmen at the Empire Exhibition, named as a camp, imitated the organization of social life among the bushmen encountered by the expedition at Tweerivieren. In both places, Bain was central in facilitating the simulation of bushmen social performance. Robert Gordon is correct in identifying Bain's efforts as "set[ting] the

65 See Peter Pels, "The Construction of Ethnographic Occasions in Late Colonial Uluguru," History and Anthropology 8 (1994): 322. See also Peter Pels & Oscar Salemink, "Introduction: Five Theses on Ethnography as Colonial Practice," in the same journal, 1-34 . 66 We note Pels's further point that ethnographic research has usually been written up at a distance in time and space. See Pels, "Construction." 67 Henrika Kuklick, The Savage Within: The Social History of British Anthropology, 18851945 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991): 15.

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standard for the emergent tradition of Bushman displays."68 At the Windhoek Agricultural Show in 1936, scientific research and "native" display for public consumption were conducted in the same moment.P? In Johannesburg, the two activities might have had slightly different locales, but the scientific interests of the Tweerivieren researchers were sustained throughout the Empire Exhibition's public performances at Milner Park. A union ofthe scientific and the spectacle was guaranteed by the figure of Donald Bain, and by the presence of Dart, Doke, Maingard, Kirby et al. on the Bushman Camp Committee which was responsible for shuttling the bushmen from the research stage to the exhibition stage in Johannesburg. Among the various representations of /Khanako and her group at the Empire Exhibition were photographs taken by members of the public. One such photo grapher (as mentioned earlier) was the visitor from Cape Town, Carol Rijker. How are we to understand what was happening in Johannesburg for such spectators who felt encouraged to take their own pictures, and how does this relate to science? There were, of course, many audiences, male and female. Viewing opportunities were specially arranged for black spectators. It is likely, however, that Carol Rijker may have made her tour of the Empire Exhibition on the same terms as a white woman. In her encounter with this bushman exhibition we have an inkling of the patterns of social life and cultural consumption of an educated, sophisticated, 'modem' South African woman whose young adulthood in inner-city Cape Town of the early twentieth century took place on the border between white and coloured. As a teacher and as a single woman, she enjoyed the financial and personal independence that enabled her to travel around South Africa and abroad. How did she imbibe the historical re-enactments and fabrications, and the racial genealogies, presented for her consideration in 1936?7o Given that she was able to conduct aspects of her life as white at a time before the hardened definitions of apartheid were introduced a decade later, how do we historicize her interaction with these displays, questioning the categorizations as we do and coming with prior knowledge of the unfurling oflater racial political and social systems in South Africa? While we cannot answer these questions, Carol Rijker's and others' participation in the spectacle presents us with an intriguing example of what Nancy Rose Hunt

68

Gordon , "Saving the Last South African Bushman," 29.

Publications deriving from this research-spectacle (organized , in fact, by the Native Commissioner, Cocky Hahn) include Alexander Galloway, "A Contribution to the Physical Anthropology of the Ovambo ,' South African Journal a/Science 34 (November 1937): 351-{)4. 70 For details on the ' show' itself, conducted by Bain, see Gordon, " , Bain's Bushmen' ," 267- 70. 69

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has argued , namely: "Colonialism can no longer be viewed as a process of imposition from a singular European metropole," but must be seen as "tangled layers of political reactions" and "lines of conflicting projections and domestications that converged in specific local misunderstandings, struggles and representations.t'"' Holding the Empire Exhibition in Johannesburg reinforces Rose Hunt's point concerning "multiple and distin ct [...] metropoles.r" But the two most popular displays at the Exhibition were the reconstruction of the "Zimbabwe Ruins " and the bushman camp. These phantoms of Africa's past were peripheralized and romanticized by their sheer juxtaposition next to mining displays and the showcase for secondary industrialization. Did such new cultural displays become part of various men 's and women 's composition of masculine, feminine, racial and other identities? Did Carol Rijker 's world allow her to instate herself as part of this assertive public culture and to be included in a new metropolitan identity as a "modern woman ," despite her possible submerged and disowned Khoisan ancestry?

FI G U R E

8: Section of album page showing visit to the "Bushman Camp" at the

Empire Exhibition, Johannesburg 1936 (photograph by Carol Rijker).

71

Nancy Rose Hunt, "Introduction," Gender and History 8.3 (November 1996): 326.

72

Rose Hunt, "Introduction" to Gender and Ilistory , 326.

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In this celebration of South Africa's modernity there is so much more about gendering to be unpacked . We do not just mean the differential treatment meted out to men and women, or how men and women as audiences experienced representation differently: we refer to the deployment of metaphors of gender, and the metamorphic qualities of gender within representation itself. Another feature staged at the Empire Exhibition that we can mention briefly here is the pageant, in which eight different regions of Southern Africa and their histories were all personified by young white female "pageant leaders." They became, in effect, gendered symbols of South Africa's history within a pageant which sought "to depict, in a series of episodes, the long struggle that was necessary before a South African nation was created and white civilization made paramount in the sub-continent.t'P These "beauties with personality" had been selected via the medium of a beauty competition conducted by a Johannesburg newspaper, which published photographs that idealized and enhanced their conventional aesthetic appeal. At the exhibition pageant , such feminized objects of historical representation effected a transfiguration of abstract histories into concrete female bodies. It is possible to argue that IKhanako' s concrete presence was the opposite - abstraction and historical speculation followed the presentation (the specularity) of her concrete female body.

From science to spectacle: steatopygia and swastikas A fragmentation of /Khanako's body has taken place, through hyperfocalization on specific parts of it in photography (the buttocks) and the medical sectioning-off of carefully selected parts of her body (hand, foot, head, genitals). This splitting into parts and their representations has left traces which have undergone a concentrat ion in some areas (museum) and dispersal in others (card). This is the fallout from the dual unfolding of science and the spectacle. The image contained in the card found in Cocky Hahn's files in the Windhoek archives of IKhanako, naked and in profile but with a waistband on her body and chain around her neck, embarked on further routes of circulation . It is not entirely clear whether the swastika on her buttock was added in the making of the card (though it is likely), or who effected this addition . But this was the image printed in Jack Stodel's book and which he dishonestly - in an act of bravado - claimed to have taken himself in the Namib Desert. In this image, jackboots were created as well. A photograph taken by Robert Gordon of the card in the Windhoek Archive,

73

Rand Daily Mail (15 May 1936) .

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slightly distorted in perspective, was passed on to Pippa Skotnes , who then printed it in the visual endnotes to the publication Miscast : Negotiating the Presence of the Bushm en. The image, now in its third or fourth generation, had lost much detail through deterioration and underexposure. In Miscast, it has simply been placed in a collage of supposedly self-explanatory pictorial atrocities against the bushmen amid floating captions such as "stuffed," "flayed ," "scarred," "marked," and "skinned."74 A further circulation flowed from this publication. In June 1996, at the Breakwater Lodge (formerly a prison) in Cape Town, this image of IKh anako was flashed on to a screen as part of a sequence of disparate visuals relevant to the Johannesburg artist Colin Richards ' biography and aesthetic, in the course of a conference presenta-

tion." In the problematics of Richards ' presentation, IKhanako' s re-appearance, free-floating and utterly without comment, was yet another decontextualized appropriation, alerting us to the dangers of "an emptying out of deep histories for a momentary voyeurism.r" What, then , might be a deep history of /Khanako's representation? Such a history is beyond our means in such brief compass as this essay: for one thing, we have by no means exhausted all the documentary, oral and visual sources which can tell us of her history and the circulation of her images. But one aspect that seemed important to us to identify, at least, was the occasion on which the original photograph was taken that later became the most circulated - and with which we started this enquiry. This alone has been a challenge. Could it have been taken in 1936 at Tweerivieren or in Johanne sburg, or in 1937 in Cape Town? We know from the Doke and Reinallt-Jones book that anthropometric photographs of naked male and female bodies, taken singly and in groups, were taken as part of the research carried

74 Skotnes was aware of details of /Khanako' s identity. Two further images of lKhanako have been included and carefully captioned in Miscast. The photograph in Figure 4 from the Duggan Cronin sequence (M M 2277: Duggan- Cronin Collection, McGregor Museum, Kimberley) was published by Duggan-Cronin in The Bushman Tribes of Southern Africa (Kimberley : Alexander McGregor Museum , 1942); the photograph in the radio broadcasting studio depicting /Khanako at the microph one (Photo 6 in this article) comes from the Cape Times Collection housed in the South African Library. Sec Skotnes, ed. Miscast, 196 and 256. 75 Colin Richards, "A Bad Memory: Telling Tales," Faultlines Conference, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, 4-5 July 1996. 76 This phrase is borrowed from Tim Burke' s discussion of problematic al approaches to global culture. See Timoth y Burke, ". Fork Up and Smile ' : Marketing, Colonial Knowledge and the Female Subject in Zimbabwe," Gender and History Special Issue: Gendered Colonialisms in Afri can History 8.3 (November 1996): 441.

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out by Raymond Dart and his colleagues at Tweerivieren. These included photographs of women taken in a sideways pose which effectively constructed steatopygia. These photographic images are accompanied by detailed studies of the genitalia and bodily proportions of the subjects. We also know that in Johannesburg, during the Empire Exhibition, Duggan-Cronin took a series of anthropometric photographs of /Khanako with her father Abraham's wife, Thobaku, one of which featured in his book published in 1942.

F IG U R E

9: Original steatopygic photograph of /Khanako (without modifications;

National Archive of South Africa, Pretoria) .

One more version of the image surfaced to shed further light on the problem. This was a photograph found by Robert Gordon in the National Archives in Pretoria. It had been inventoried in the Transvaal Archives Collection in the late 1950s or early 1960s, and it is to be found in a series of photographs about steatopygia." This

77

Transvaal Archive Depot, 15878, National Archives of South Africa, Pretoria.

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version of the image shows /Khanako to be wearing long socks and ankle boot s, and without the addition of the swastika and the effect of jackboots. It is probably the origi nal photograph from which all the rest are derived. More detail is visible in this shot, which is not in any of the other versions . On the right side of the picture, there is a collec tion of buildings, with roofs, balcony and windows. The larger frame of this versio n also indicates a terrain that is sloping. This suggests that /Khanako was standing on a hillside in a suburban setting, and that the photograph may have been taken in Cape Town. The presence of the chain around her neck, we thought, pointed to such an explanation. We knew from a newspaper report." that she had acquired a snuff box while in Cape Town in 1937, and other photographs of her taken in Cape Town revealed her wearing this snuff box on a chain around her neck. If Cape Town was indeed the site of the original photograph, then who took it and why was it taken in the first place? Photographs were taken by divers hands at the Cape Town event. A variety of images were captured for the Cape Times. There are group shots, shots of group dancing, and heroic portrait shots taken at the Rosebank showgro unds. In addition to a series taken in the radio studio where /Khanako was sing led out to contribute to a British Coronation broadcast , there are photographs of the march on Parliament, as well as a maritime series showing the bushmen wit h blankets on board a boat close to harbour. These photographs sought to record the events of the visit to Cape Town. The photograp hers S.R. Noyes and IIse Steinhoff also took portrait and documentary pictures in Cape Town for the British S outh Africa Annual (December 1937). The only stud ies of a scientific nature undertaken in Cape Town were conducted by Matthew Drennan . These included photograp hic studies, of which the Anato my Department at the University of Cape Town has no record. There was the possibility- if the photograph had been taken in Cape Town - that the original of the card derived from an anthropometric sequence taken under Drennan 's supervision. Further research has shown that it is more likely that the photograph was indeed taken later, even outside Cape Town - possibly between 1939 and 1941 , when a certa in C.F. MacDon ald took a party of fifteen bushmen on controversial tours around the Western Cape.?? They were returned to Tweerivieren on 3 March 1941. Die Burger ( 11 May 1937). 79 lA. van der Merwe & L. Vlok, Report 98/96: Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, District Gordonia, Province Northern Cape, Claimant Southern Kalahari Bushmen (Department of Land Affairs, April 1996-May 1996). MacDonald was prosecuted at Prince Albert and found guilty of displaying the bushmen , something prohibited by legislation. 78

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The sparse records of these events indicate the presence of a 55-year-old female, "Fytjie (Komkoes)," among the party. If indeed this was the case, it indicates a key discursive shift in the "Hottentot Venus" image, as a genre, out of the framework of science into more popular forms of ocularization. The photograph was probably taken on a farm in the Kalahari , as the caption indicates, perhaps in 1940, while the Native Affairs Department's ethnologist, Van Warmelo, was in Gordonia carrying out research with a view to "salvaging" the bushmen.s" But all this is speculation. The existence of the initial image found in the National Archives in Pretoria also made it possible, perhaps more importantly, to identify the changes that have been made in the photographic processes which have resulted in different versions of the image . In this form, the photograph seemed to be within the standard anthropometric genre seeking to portray the "steatopygia" of the bushwoman. It bore the caption in Afrikaans: "Boesmanvrou met tipiese steatopygia [...] [Bushman woman with typical steatopygiaj.t"! As a supposed scientific study, this photograph transforms the particular subject, IKhanako, into a generalized type, ready for new paradigms. From this narrow channel , the image fanned out into a delta of IKhanako images. It became a print on a card, but now with a swastika inscribed on the surface of the print. It is as if it had been branded on to her body, as if to animalize. But this is not just any mark. The swastika was a fearful symbol of German resurgence in the interwar years; here it plasters a new trope onto an already hyperfocalized part of the anatomy. If this production of IKhanako was made by and for anglophile whites in Southern Africa, then it falls within a genre of anti-German (for the 1930s read : antiNazi) visual propaganda. In this form, its purpose would have been to ensavage the enemy Germans (who were also their rivals reclaiming South West Africa after 1933), to feminize them, bushmanize them, steatopygize them .82 It was South Africans speaking to a rival power through the medium ofAfrican bodies.

80 " Proposed Establishment of Reserve for Bushmen in Gordonia District," Native Affairs Department Memo (14 March 1940). 81 The caption continues: "geneem op 'n plaas in die Kalahari ..." ["taken on a farm in the Kalahari .. ."]. 82 There were precedents for this ensavagement of Germans by South Africans during World War 1, one being when South African officers constructed the words 'Kai ser Bill' on the northern border of the former German territory of S WA using the bones of Ovambo famine victims. See Patricia Hayes, "South Africa Doing African History: Bone Narratives from Namibia, 1915-20s," in Rethinking African History, ed. Simon McGrath, Charles Jedrej, Kenneth King & Jack Thompson (Edinburgh : Centre for African Studies University of Edinburgh, 1997): 11 7-55 .

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Another possible explanation might be that the card was connected to the revival of German colonial interest in South West Africa, following Hitler 's rise to power in the 1930s and his claims to the territory. In the unlikely event that it was produced by a pro-Nazi German photographer in South West Africa, it may have represented a reclamation of Africa 's land by Germans through the vigorous new symbol of the swastika . But this is to suppose charitable and positive sentiments held by Germans towards Africa . The card was far more likely to have been produced by an antiGerman photographer making a mockery of Nazi aspirations (probably towards South West Africa) through a denigrating image of Africa. Popular settler discourse about Africa in the interwar years was often highly negative: who would want this impossible place? The excess revealed in the construction of steatopypia in the photograph could stand as a symbol of the excess ofAfrica to the European-minded: excessive heat, excessive drought, excessive distances, labour problems ... .

FI GURE

10: IKhanako as spokesperson during an international broadcast to mark the

British coronation, at the broadcasting studio in Cape Town (Cape Times Collection, National Library of South Afric a).

It is not clear how widely the image was distributed as a card, but because it

acquired new life (as a card) it was sent into new realms of circulation beyond the university and the "scientific" genre. In this more commercial form, it was also highl y mobile . We should remember Jonathan Crary 's point about the observer: this

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card may have been made with certain intentions in mind, but it is what audiences did with it that is so crucia1. 83 As a card, it was certainly translocated, probably in the late 1930s, into the sphere of local SWA politics, which at that time centred on debates about Nazism. It is possible that it was also circulated in South Africa, where Hahn periodically took his leave. Whereas the card image shows the blurring and partial underexposure characteristic of generational deterioration , and has clearly been cropped to exclude much of the landscape, the photograph published in Jack Stodel's book is less blurred (though it also shows darker patches of underexposure) and has not been cropped . In addition to the swastika, this version bears further markings. There is an attempt to outline the lower half of lKhanako 's body, possibly to compensate for the darkness and loss of clarity at this stage of the photograph's life. The socks on her lower legs, however, indistinguishable from shadow on the card, have now been given definition and transformed into what appear to be jackboots. This gives a new brand to the photograph. Coming on top of the swastika, this addition makes her lower body a zone of militarization. It doubles the point of the Nazi emblem, and increases the traumatization of her body through such violence of representation . There is a huge irony for the original makers of this image of IKhanako. They may have taken an anthropometric photograph of her with "scientific" intent, but the later insertion of the swastika is a profoundly anti-intellectual gesture which inverts and makes a mockery of their highbrow purpose. It raises the vexed but little-tackled question of the tension between intellectual and anti-intellectual forces in white, predominantly masculine cultures of Southern Africa in the interwar years, and suggests that the latter were far from homogeneous. The rebirths of IKhanako's image, as we have seen, did not end there. Creating a card out of a photographic image does not preclude it from becoming a photograph again. This is exactly what happened through Robert Gordon's camera in the Windhoek Archives . This photograph (derived from the card in Hahn's collection) in Skotnes's hands, put through a scanner into a desktop design programme in the production of photographic collages for the book Miscast, now has new life in relation to photographs of atrocities against the bushmen. That this image in this book could be rendered into a slide for a conference presentation by Colin Richards bears testimony to its infinite transportability. What also emerges is the extremely porous nature of the boundaries between different visual media and image genres. This

83

See Crary, Techniques a/the Observer.

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means that all the potenti al for objectification, depersonalization and disernpowerment implicit in the staging of the supposedly empirical, scientific visual study of lKhanako's body has been realized in uses to which it has been put from its pos ition as a card and arguabl y, for example, in Colin Richards's conference presentation. In arguing for the porosity of the boundaries between visual media - starting with science and endin g as card / endnote / slide spectacle - we do not wish to overlook the impact of technology on cultural produ ction s. The card of /Khanako with swas tika is a defac ement of science and kno wledge; it might even be described as the mark of anti-knowledge.P' Scientists as well as /Khanako were affected by this anti-intellectual graffiti : but it took only one reproduction of the image and one inscription in the technical process of reprinting the photo graph to do so. Thus, the mechani zation of image-production by the 1930s made it easy to flick the switch, as it were, between intellectual and anti-intellectual version s of the same subject to service very different white audience s in Southern Africa. In sum, what has occurred at every tum has been a deepening of the genericization of /Khanako as the bushwoman "type." The seeds of this were sown in the anthropometri c photograph, when /Khanako was reduced discursively to a physical type throu gh the hyperfoc alization on her buttocks . That this zone became the site of the inscription of further meanings, adding to an image that was alread y familiar (the "Hottentot Venus"), reinforced the dehumanization involved in generi cization. Ironicall y, this genericization occurs equally through circuits of distribution which seek to expose dehum anization, as in the Misca st catalogue and Col in Richard s' "Faultlines" address. We are aware that there is a struggle over representation, between those who have the power to represent and tho se who get represented. Thi s is not to say that there exists a simple dichotomy, for the workings of the visual economy are too complex and dynamic for such reductionism But we have come to learn in the process of doing this research that a "rehumanization" or "reconstitution" of /Khanako, through an attempt to integrate the fragments and traces of her passing through South Africa in 1936-37, is idealistic and probably impossible. We cannot arrogate to ourselves such power s of redemption. The most we can do is to interrogate each

84 While the engraving of the swastika is not strictly photomontage, it shares with the latter the propensity to fragment the realism of the photographic discourse of the original - a discourse on which the scientists were so reliant. On photomontage and the subversion of photographic positivism, see Andre Marais, "A n Introduction to John Heartfield and Photomontage" (unpublished postgraduate research paper, History Department University of the Western Cape, 2000).

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process of representation and the stages through which new meanings have been produced. In doing so, we must take full responsibility for the new circuits of representation which we have generated in our own academic genre.

IKhanako's fate We have expended some effort in trying to find out what happened to /Khanako after 1937. Whatever we know and have examined in this essay has been derived from the profound intersection between scientific research and visual disp lay that made South Africa peculiarly that of /Khanako and her companions in 1936- 37. We have some idea of the fate of :f':Khomani (N/u)-speakers who were dispossessed through the reorganization of the land in the northern Cape during the 1930s. Recent oral evidence suggests that, in 1937, the bushme n returned to the southern Kalahari from the Empire Exhibition only to find that their dwellings had been burned , and that they were to be removed from land that had been proclaimed as the Kalahari Gemsbok Park (KG 1') in 1931.85 Beginning with this proclamation, this northern Cape group became locked into cycles of destitution and salvation involving further relations of patronage in the decades after Bain's efforts. During the 1990s, some descendants of this group performed as bushmen in the tourism context at Kagga Kamma in the Cedarberg Mountains. As late as the 1990s, it was understood that the language N/u had died out by the 1960s or 1970s, accelerated by the dispersal and fragment ation of its speakers after the proclamations in the 1930s. In 1995, this gro up from Kagga Kamma, together with relat ives living in poverty at Welkom, south of the KGI' , instituted a land claim in terms of the Restitution of Land Rights Act 22 of 1994 against the Nat ional Parks Board for a portion of the land area of the KGP from which their ancestors had been removed. The last of the community had been expelled from the national park in 1972. On 21 March 1999, in an emotional land-restitution celebration at Askham, near Tweerivieren, witnessed by 2,000 people , an agreement with the :f':Khomani San Communal Property Association, settling the land claim, was signed by the then Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and the Land Affairs Minister Derek Hanekom. This agreement gave claimants access to 60,000 hectares of land, including private and state land south of the Park. It also included a half-share in 55,000 hectares within the KGI', which would

85 Ouma lUna Rooi, during interview with Ouma /Una Rooi and Ouma Keis Brou at Andriesvale, 4 December 2000; see also John Yeld, "Joy as displaced desert people get land back," Cape Argus (22 March 1999).

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remain a con servation area while being made avail able to the community on a con tract basis.86 The preparation of the land claim gave the :;tKhomani community "a n opportunity to count up its members who had been dispersed over the whole country." Fro m February 1997 , this research led to the identification of people who could speak the N/u language. By early 1998, in spite of deep proc esses of language loss that had accompanied dispe rsal and alien ation , a total of eleven speakers of "the ancient language" had been identified in Rietfontein, Upington, Ol ifant shoek and other settlements of the north ern Cape.87 In interviews, four of these N/u-speakers, Anna Kassie , Ouma Lena Boo ysen, Ouma lUna Rooi and Oum a Keis Brou, 88 spoke of how N/u had been turned into a language of sham e, of how new generations had grown up to speak Afrikaans and Nama instead, languages that gave better access to jobs and patronage. In spite of the language being rejected by youn ger generations, Kassie, Boo ysen, Rooi and Brou continued to speak N/u. Today they laugh at the idea that N/u was thought of as extinct, expre ssin g the "journey to new selfrespect'Y" for which the the land cla im had been a catalyst. While the po litics of culture and identi ty expressed in the land claim refle ct contrad ictory impulses, Kassie, Booysen, Rooi and Brou call for a histo ry of the so uthern Kalahari which addresses the experiences of removal, surv ival and restitution . The land claim had drawn on Dart 's 1936 ethnological research, seen as "exact genea logical records.T''' to make an argument abou t authenticity and aboriginality. In si milar vein, some of the interests wishing to put into effect the land-restitution settlement in cultural and eco no mic terms seek to promote a para digm of "harm less peopl e," and essenti alized images of hunt er-gatherer identity throu gh performance

86

John Yeld, "Joy as displaced desert people get land back."

Nigel Crawhall, "Reclaiming Rights, Resources and Identity: The Power of an Ancient San Language," in Voices, Values and Identities Symposium: Record of the Proceedings, ed. Yvonne Dladla (Pretoria: South African National Parks, J 998): 62--63. 87

88 Interview with Ouma Lena Booysen and Anna Kassie, Pabalello, Upington, 3 Decemb er 2000; interv iews with Ouma /Una Rooi, Ouma Keis Brou and Anna Kassie, Andriesva le, 4 December 2000 . 89 Nige l Crawhall, "Reclaiming Rights, Resources and Identity," 62. 90 " Bushman Land Claim: Kalahari Gemsbo k National Park," in Northern Cape Province: Land Claim and Submission to the Minister of Land Affairs, submitted by the Land Cla im Committee. the Southern Kalahari Bushmen (7 August 1995): 8.

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in a tourist setting."! While these ideas are undoubtedly based on primordial notions of cultu re, more challenging approaches have emerged from the work done by the South African San Institute (SASI) together with identified N/u-speakers in mapping personal and community histories and place names, and in compiling a "biodiversity resource history." This work has demonstrated that language was a "focal point for survival." It "symbolised the exclusion and marginalization , and further represented the aspiration for a renaissance.l'V The programme in land-use mapping - from food sites to burial grounds - suggests potential for the public inscription of the southern Kalahari landscape with indigenous histories and cultural emblems, drawing on knowledge held in language and memory. In this mapping of cultural history, N/u-speakers have referred to the experiences of being tagged, measured and photographed in 1936 at Tweerivieren, and have identified sites of family homes, birthplaces and sites of significance from the photographic record of the Dart expedition . While Ouma Keis Brou has identified herself, her siblings and her grandparents among the anthropometric and group photos , both she and Ouma lUna Rooi have recalled the desperate circumstances of trying to retain access to land which forced people to shed all clothing for the gaze of the scientists and the lens of the camera. While they were led to believe that the work of the professors and the spectacle of culture would ensure that access to land and resources in the southern Kalahari would be retained, their experience on their return from the Empire Exhibition in 1937 was expulsion and dispersal .Y' IKhanako has a place in this memory of community and dismemberment, and in the desire for restoration and reconstitution. She is remembered with pride by her maternal cousins lUna Brou and Keis Rooi for her wide understanding of the medicinal properties of plants and roots - also as someone who was articulate, confident and dignified, and who had the language abilities and the forthrightness to communicate with everyone. These qualities found expression especially in Cape Town in 1937 in the absence of her father, Abraham. They are also suggested in a photograph taken by Ilse Steinhoff. Ironically, IKhanako is depicted from the side, as

9 1 For a discussion of the cultural politics of the southern Kalahari land claim, see Ciraj Rassool, "Cultural Performance and Fictions of Identity: The Case of the Khoisan of the Southern Kalahari, 1936-1937," in Voices. Values and Identities Sympos ium: Record ofthe Proceedings, ed. Yvonne D1adla (Pretoria: South African National Parks, 1998): 73-79.

92 South African San Institute, Annual Review (April 1997-March 1998): 13-18; for more discussion of this research, see Nigel Crawhall, "Reclaiming Rights, Resources and Identity." 93 Interview with Ouma lUna Rooi and Ouma Keis Brou, Andriesvale, 4 December 2000.

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on the card in Cocky Hahn's papers. But the focus now is not so much on static bodily features as on the poise, confidence and authority of her engagement with Bain as she addresses him, apparently undaunted by his size. This belies the description of her in the original caption as being simply "one of his charges." Oral histories conducted in the northern Cape have confirmed that IKhanako, too, experienced the dispersal out of the KGP in 1937 that almost resulted in language death and in the near-obliteration of community ties. There is some possibility that she was displayed once again in towns in the Western Cape in the late 1930s by C.F. MacDonald. While Ouma Lena Booysen, interviewed when she was in her nineties, seemed to remember that IKhanako had been murdered by an Afrikaner youth on a farm in a senseless killing." this could not be confirmed by Keis Brou and lUna Rooi, and thus seems unlikely. Brou and Rooi, by contrast , remember simply that they had heard some decades earlier that IKhanako had died." Our visits to the Medical Schools at the Universities of Cape Town and the Witwatersrand revealed that IKhanako 's body, on her death, did not follow the same route of medical dissection as that of her daughter IKeri-/Keri, and that her bones did not end up in an anatomy museum. This could indicate that after 1937 (or after 1941) IKhanako may have successfully escaped the nexus of bushwoman-type representation. It is perhaps also fitting that whatever we can piece together about IKhanako' s fate flows not from official sources, but from popular memory. There was another character from the 1936-37 happenings who did not escape the purview of the anatomist Matthew Drennan. In a strange twist of fate, it emerged that the body of Thomas Boydell, the former Senator and Cape politician who agitated for a sanctuary for the bushmen and who captioned an anthropometric photograph of IKhanako in his book My Lucks Still In with the words "Aniko, an intelligent Bushwoman," was donated to science. Not far from the cast of IKhanako' s bodily profile, it is Boydell's skeleton - not IKhanako's - that hangs in a glass case in the dissecting room of the University of Cape Town's Medical School. On learning that IKeri-/Keri's bones ended up in the "cemetery of science" at the Hunterian Museum at the University of the Witwatersrand, Ouma lUna Rooi and Ouma Keis Brou demanded that her remains be located and returned to the southern Kalahari for burial, as part of the process of the reconstitution of community'" In 94

Interview with Duma Lena Booysen and Anna Kassie, Pabalello, Upington, 3 December 2000.

95

Interview with Duma lUna Rooi and Duma Keis I3rou, 4 December 2000 .

This demand is in line with the argument presented in Skeletons in the Cupboard about the urgent need for repatriation and reburial of the human remains of the recently dead which had been 96

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the same interview, Ouma l Una Rooi and Ouma Keis Brou called for an ongoing programme of "remembering" the dispossession, the landlessness, and the journey to self-respect, and supported suggestions for the creation of a museum of history and community in the southern Kalahari . How such a memory project or museum might represent the twin processes and experiences of science and the spectacle as they occurred in 1936 and 1937 would indeed be a challenge. Nevertheless, the potential exists to historici ze and de-genericize the subjects of the 1930s, and to reflect upon the history of anthropology in South Africa in ways that powerfully shift the relations of representation. In such a museum, as in the more generalized forms of remembering, the story of IKhanako certainly has its place.

FIGURE II : Eye to eye: /Khanako addresses Donald Bain with confidence in Cape Town (photographed by lIse Steinhoff, British South Afr ica Annual, December 1937; original caption: "The ' Father ' of the Bushmen , Donald Bain, with one of his charges").

acquired by museums in South Africa and abroad as a consequence of grave robbery and insatiable competition. See Legassick & Rassool, Skeletons in the Cupboard.

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159

WORKS CITED Abrahams, Yvette. '" Ambiguity' is My Middle Name : A Research Diary about Sara Bartman, Myself, and Some Other Brown Women" (unpublished paper, University of Cape Town, nd). - - . "Images of Sara Bartman: Sexuality, Race and Gender in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain ," in Nation, Empire. Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race, ed. Ruth Roach Pierson & Nupur Chaudhuri (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1998): 220-36. Bain, Donald . "Kalahari." "The Kalahari Bushmen," in Bushman Reserve (brochure, 1936). Botha, L.J., & H.P. Steyn. "Report on the Bushmen of Kagga Kamma, and their Southern Kalahari Origins ," in Land Claim and Submission to the Minister ofLand Affairs Submitted by the Land

Claim Committee, the Southern Kalahari Bushmen (7 August 1995). Boydell , Thomas. "My Luck's Still In": With More Spotlights on General Smuts (Cape Town: Stewart , 1948). Burke, Timothy. '" Fork Up and Smile' : Marketing, Colonial Knowledge and the Female Subject in Zimbabwe," Gender and History Special Issue: Gendered Colonialisms in African History 8.3 (November 1996): 440-56. Clifford , James. "On Ethnographic Allegory," in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics ofEthno-

graphy, cd. James Clifford & George E. Marcus (Berkeley: U of California P, 1986): 98-121. Coetzee , DJ. Living with the Dead (Cape Town: Coetzee & Sartorius, 1953). Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge MA : MIT Press, 1995). Crawhall, Nigel. "Reclaiming Rights, Resources and Identity: The Power of an Ancient San Language ," in /1Jices, Values and Identities Symposium: Record of the Proceedings, ed. Yvonne D1adla (Pretoria: South African National Parks, 1998): 57-71 . Dart, Raymond. "The Hut Distribution , Genealogy and Homogeneity of the I?Auni-;tKhomani Bushmen," Bantu Studies 11.3 (September 1937): 159-74. -

- . "The Physical Characters of the I?Auni4Khomani Bushmen, " in Bantu Studies 11.3 (September 1937): 175-246.

Davison, Patricia. "Human Subjects as Museum Objects. A Project to Make Life-Casts of ' Bushmen' and 'Hottentots', 1907-1924," Annals ofthe South African Museum 102.5 (February 1993). Drennan, Matthew R. "Finger Mutilation in the Bushman," Bantu Studies 11.3 (September 1937): 247-49. Drury, James, & Matthew Drennan. 'The Pudendal Parts of the South African Bush Race," Medi-

calJournal ofSouth Africa 22 (November 1926): 113-17. Duggan-Cronin, Alfred Martin . The Bushman Tribes of Southern Africa (Kimberley: Alexander McGregor Museum, 1942). Dubow, Saul. "Human Origins, Race Typology and the ' Other ' Raymond Dart," African Studies 55.1 (1996) : 1-30.

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- . Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995).

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Edwards, Elizabeth . "Ordering Others: Photographies, Anthropologies and Taxonomies," in In Visible Light: Photography and Classification in Art, Science and The Everyday , ed. Chrissie lies & Russell Roberts (Oxford: Museum of Modem Art, 1997): 5~8 . -

- . "Performing Science: Still Photography and the Torres Strait Expedition," in Cambridge and the Torres Strait: Centenary Essays on the 1898 Anthropological Expedition, ed. Anita Herle & Sandra Rouse (Cambridge : Cambridge UP, 1998): 106-35 .

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- , et al. "Discussion 2," in Imaging the Arctic, ed. J.C.H. King & Henrietta Lidchi (London: British Museum Press, 1998): 233-35 .

Galloway, Alexander. "A Contribution to the Physical Anthropology of the Ovambo ," South African Journal ofScience 34 (November 1937): 351-64. Gilman , Sander. "Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward and Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth Century Art, Medicine and Literature," Critical Inquiry (1985) : 204-42. Gordon, Robert J. '" Bain's Bushmen' : Scenes at the Empire Exhibition, 1936," in Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business, ed. Bemth Lindfors (Bloomington : Indiana UP; Cape Town: David Philip, 1999): 266-89. -

- . Picturing Bushmen: The Denver African Expedition of1925 (Athens : Ohio UP; Cape Town: David Philip; Windhoek : Namibia Scientific Society, 1997).

-

- . "S aving the Last South African Bushman : A Spectacular Failure?" Critical Arts 9.2 (1995) : 28-48.

Gould , Stephen Jay. "The Hottentot Venus," Natural History 10 (1982): 20-24. Hayes, Patricia. '" Cocky' Hahn and the ' Black Venus' : the Making of a Native Commis sioner in South West Africa, 1915-46," Gender and History 8.3 (November 1996): 364-92. Repr in Cultures ofEmpire, ed. Catherine Hall (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000): 329-55 . - -. "South Africa doing African History: ' Bone Narratives' from Namibia, 1915-20s," in Rethinking African History, ed. Simon McGrath, Charles Jedrej, Kenneth King & Jack Thompson (Edinburgh : Centre for African Studies, University of Edinburgh, 1997): 117-55. Herle, Anita, & Sandra Rouse, ed. Cambridge and the Torres Strait: Centenary Essays on the 1898 Anthropological Expedition (Cambridge : Cambridge UP, 1998). Kuklick, Henrika. The Savage Within: The Social History of British Anthropology, 1885-1945 (Cambridge : Cambridge UP, 1991). Landau, Paul. "With Camera and Gun in Southern Africa: Inventing the Image of Bushmen c.1880 to 1935," in Miscast. Negotiating the Presence ofthe Bushmen, cd. Pippa Skotnes (Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 1996): 129-41. Legassick, Martin, & Ciraj Rassool. Skeletons in the Cupboard: South African Museums and the Trade in Human Remains 1907-19/ 7 (Cape Town & Kimberley: South African Museum and McGregor Museum, 2000). Marais, Andre. "An Introduction to John Heartfield and Photomontage" (unpublished postgraduate research paper, History Department University of the Western Cape, 2000).

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Pels, Peter. "The Construction of Ethnographic Occasions in Late Colonial Uluguru," History and -

Anthropology 8 (1994): 321-51. -, & Oscar Salemink, "Introduction: Five Theses on Ethnography as Colonial Practice," History and Anthropology 8 (1994): 1- 34.

Rassool, Ciraj. "Cu ltural Performance and Fictions of Identity: The Case of the Khoisan of the Southern Kalahari, 1936-1 937," in V/Jices, Values and Identities Symposium: Record of the

Proceedings, ed. Yvonne Dladla (Pretoria: South African National Parks, 1998): 73-79. Rheinallt- Jones, J.D., & C.M. Doke, ed. Bushmen of the Southern Kalahari (Johannes burg: University of the Witwatersrand, 1937). Richards, Colin. "A Bad Memory: Telling Tales" (paper presented at the Faultlines Conference, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town, 4-5 July 1996). Rose, Walter. Bushman, Whale and Dinosaur (Cape Town : Howard Timmins, 1961). Rose Hunt, Nancy. "Introducti on" to Gender and History 8.3 (November 1996): 323-37. Schrire, Carmel. "Native Views of Western Eyes," in Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of the

Bushmen, ed. Pippa Skotnes (Cape Town: U of Cape Town P, 1996): 343-53. Skotnes, Pippa. Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of the Bushmen (Cape Town: U of Cape Town P,1 996). South African San Institute. Annual Review (April 1997- March 1998). Steyn, H.P. "Southern Kalahari San Subsistence Ecology: a Reconstruction," The South African

Archaeological Bulletin 39 (1984) : 117- 24. Stodel, Jack. The Jackpot Story (Cape Town : Howard Timmins, 1965). Strother, Z.S. "D isplay of the Body Hottentot," in Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Sholl'

Business, ed. Bernth Lindfors (Bloomington: Indiana UP; Cape Town: David Philip, 1999): 1-6 1. Taussig, Michael. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History ofthe Senses (New York & London: Routledge, 1993). Tobias, Philip. "Studies of Bushmen in the Kalahari," South African Journal of Science 57.8 (August 1961): 205- 206, 217. Van der Merwe, J.A., & L. Vlok. Report 98 /96: Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, District

Gordonia, Province Northern Cape, Claimant Southern Kalahari Bushmen (Department of Land Affairs, April I996-May 1996). White, Hylton. In the Tradition of the Foref athers: Bushman Traditionality at Kagga Kamma (Cape Town: U of Cape Town P, 1995), Yeld, John. "Joy as displaced desert people get land back," Cape Argus (22 March 1999).

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Steeped histories

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'Moedermeesteres' Dutch-Afrikaans Women's Entry into the Public Sphere in the Cape Colony, 1860-1896 Marijke Du Toit

R

on Afrikaner nationalism has long challenged essentialist and static notions of 'Afrikaner' tradition by exploring the late nineteenth-century context of Dutch-Afrikaans politics and cultural re-invention. Few historians, however, have tried to explore the gendered construction of public and private spaces in Afrikaans-Dutch society before the building of a nationalist movement. One of the few historians who has challenged the way female Afrikaner nationalists feature in academic narratives - the silent and acquiescent followers of male leaders - has yet concluded that, apart from some informal participation in politics, Dutch-Afrikaans women of the nineteenth century were absent from the public sphere.' Indeed, current research suggests that women were entirely absent from the public expressions of Afrikaner ethnic politics that emerged in the Colony from the 1870s onwards. EV IS IO N IST SCHOLARSHIP

I See Lou- Marie Kruger, "Gender, Community and Identity: Women and Afrikaner Nationalism in the Volksmoeder discourse of Die Boerevrou, 1919-1931 " (MA thesis, University of Cape Town, 1991): 103. For views of Afrikaner women as acquiescent followers, see Deborah Gaitskell & Elaine Unterhalter, " Mothers of the Nation : A Comparative Analysis of Nation , Race and Motherhood in Afrikaner Nationalism and the African National Congress," in Woman- NationState , ed. Nira Yuval-Davis & Floya Anthias (London: Macmillan , 1989): 58-78 . Kruger challenges their views of Afrikaner Nationalist women. See Marijke Du Toit, " Women, Welfare and the Nurturing of Afrikaner Nationalism: A Social History of the Afrikaanse Christelike Vroue Vereniging, c.l87o-1939" (doctoral dissertation, University of Cape Town, 1996), for a more extensive discussion ofthe literature.

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'Biddende moeders' ('praying mothers'): Dutch-Afrikaans women and Dutch Reformed evangelicalism in the Cape Colony of the late nineteenth century In the early nineteenth century, women had few options for actively expressing religious devotion . Some arranged informal visits to the sick and poor. More rarely, wealthy women contributed financially to welfare work, but their influence was often limited and churchmen could take decades to execute their projects .? By the 1870s, however, women had assumed new roles and positions in religious life. They attended and led prayer meetings, belonged to mission-support organizations, and even worked as missionaries. In de Zondagschool arbeidde zij als onderwyzeres voor de laatste 17 jaren [... j Voor de zending had de overledene een open hart en hand [...j Als voorgangster van een Zuster s Biduur heeft zij dat met Hulp des Heeren gedurende 17 jaren staande gehouden; en wie zal Tante Danelie nie missen in tijd van ziekte! [For the past seventeen years she taught Sunday school [...j The deceased had an open heart and hand for missionary endeavours [... j She led the Sisters' Prayer Hour for the past seventeen years. And who would not miss Aunt Danelie in times of illnessl] 3

It was especially starting in the l870s that significant numbers of women played

new and visible roles in the religious life of Dutch-Afrikaans communities. The context was a general trend among the more well-to-do farmers and Dutch-Afrikaans petty-bourgeois to send their girls to high schools. Historians of Dutch-Afrikaans communities in the late nineteenth century have linked a shift in favour of higher education to economic change. The relative absence of industry before the l870s had meant that there was "little demand for universal literacy," and "education itself was held in low esteem." At the Cape, improved educational facilities and higher levels of school attendance were apparent from the l850s onwards." In the last three

2 Andries Dreyer, Historisch Album van de Nederduitsche Gereformeerde Kerk in Zuid Afrika (Cape Town : Cape Times, 1912) : 128-29.

3 De Kerkbode , "In Memoriam, Mev. de Weduwee W.J . ViIjoen" (10 February 1893): 42 . Also De Christen , "In Memoriam Louisa Adriane " (2 February 1883): 52-53. 4 With the introduction of state-aided public schools after 1843, the number of children at school had rapidly increased. Fewer than 4,000 children (2,800 whites) attended school in 1842; by 1870 more than 40,000 children (18,000 whites) were at school. Even so, education was still held in low esteem. In the Cape, only 43 percent of white children between the ages of five and fifteen were literate by 1875; Andre Du Toit, "The Cape Afrikaners ' Failed Liberal Moment," in Democratic Liberalism in South Africa: Its History and Prospect , ed. Jeffrey Butler, Richard Elphick &

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167

decades of the century, however, accelerating economic change brought a new appreciation of formal education among Dutch-Afrikaans speakers. The very poor still showed little interest in education and many farmers still regarded basic literacy skills as sufficient. Many better-off farmers and townspeople now believe d that their daughters and sons shou ld receive a high-schoo l educatio n, and sent them to a number of new schoo ls founded througho ut the colony.' Bij de toenemende welvaart van ons land, en de behoefte , die er is aan den arbeid van aile hande n, zullen langzamerhand de vrouwen ook menige werkzaamheid op zich ncmen, die tot hiertoe gehee l aan de mannen was overge laten ... [With the increasi ng prosperity of our country, and the need for wo rk from all hands, women will also slowly take many labours upon themselves that have hitherto been entirely left to men]"

But, as might be expected from a scheme initiated by the leading figure

In

the

DRC's missionary wing, Murray's project had specific religious intent:

David Welsh (Middletown CT : We sleyan UP, 1987) : 39; Hermann Giliomee, "The Beginning s of Afrikaner Nationalism, 1870- 1915," South African Histori cal Journ al 19 (1987 ): 116. 5 Edna Bradlow provides a short history of women's education in the nineteenth century . From the 1870s, governesses and "Ladies Seminaries" run by "distressed gentlewomen" were rapidly replaced by high schools often run by English and Scottish teachers; Bradlow, "Women and Education in Nineteenth-Century South Africa: The Attitudes and Experiences of Middle-Class English-

Speakin g Females at the Cape," So uth Afr ican Historical Journal 28 ( 1993): 132. Unfortunately, government sources provide no statistics on how many girls and young women attended school between 1874 and 1918. The few available statistics on women graduates do suggest a huge growth in the number of women attending high school. "Certificates of competency" were issued to 3 women and 6 men in 1873, and 74 wome n (24 men) in 1884. "Certificates with honour" were isued to 8 women (3 men) in 1873, and 33 wome n (2 men) in 1885. The Huguenot Seminary 's annual publication indicated that between 1874 and 1896, 1,088 women graduated from this institution alone. Most of them were Dutch-Afrikaans , Most prospective teachers qualified at school where they received training in addition to regular schooling. Various teaching certificates were issued to school leavers at this time. Most of the young women who left with Standard IV and a "third class certificate" had no intention of teaching. A middle- or second-class certificate could be obtained after two years and was regarded as the equivalent of matriculation. Until the early twentieth century, universities at the Cape ran matriculation classes that prepared students for the university entrance exam . Some 990 white females (1,909 males) were "engaged in the Leamed Professions, in literature or art or science, with their immed iate subordinates" in 1875. Very likely, the great majority of wome n were school teachers. In 1891, only 1,069 men were "ministering to education" in the Cape co lony, but the number of women had tripled to 3,148; annua l reports of the Superintendent-General for Education; Blue-Books of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope; Cape of Good Hope Census of 1991; E.G. Malherbe, Educati on in So uth Afr ica. 1652-1922 (Cape Town : Juta, 1925): 147-53; The Huguenot Seminary Annual, 1896. 6

De Wekker (May 1873): 34-35.

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Du Ton

And rew Murray's solicitation of teachers from Mt Holyoke was [...] not only an attempt to raise the educational level of Afrikaner girls, but was a plot to plant evangelical piety and support for home and foreign missions among the women of the Dutch Reformed Church."

The model for all the schools founded cooperatively by North American teachers and Dutch Reformed clergy was Mount Holyoke, a women's college in Massachusetts. Founded in 1837 and one of the first women's colleges in the USA, Mount Holyoke sought to provide women with a solid academic education while imbuing them with evangelical activism.f Wat de dichter van de roeping der vrouw in't algemeen zingt, is ook bij uitnernendheid van Mej. Zahn waar geweest: "Meest op 'd achtergrond van 't leven is haar schoon-tooneel bereid ; / In uw Liefelijke schemering, dienende bescheidenheid." [The poet's celebration of woman's calling aptly describes Miss Zahn: "Her lovely contribution was mostly prepared in life's background; / Self-effacing service in Your beauteous twilight ."]?

The 1870s and 1880s were decades when access to higher education for the first time made careers as missionaries or teachers a possibility for Dutch-Afrikaans women . For some women at least, marriage was no longer necessary for economic survival. Nor were the increasing numbers of Dutch-Afrikaans brides dependent girls leaving their fathers' houses for the first time: instead, they were young women with the experience of independence that some years of teaching had fostered: daar [hangt] oneindig veel , ja alles van af, welke de eerste indrukken zijn die gij aan hun gemoed geeft [...] al wat gij aan uwe kinderen doet , draagt vruchten als gij reed s in het koude graf ligt [...] De moeder van Samuel was eene biddende moeder , zoo ook de moeder van Timotheus. Heeft uw kind ook eene biddende moeder? [So much, indeed everything, depends on the first impressions that you give to a child [ ] everything you do to your children will bear fruit when you lie in the cold grave [ ] The mother of Samuel was a praying mother , as was the mother of Timothy. Does your child also have a praying mother?] 10

De Wekker carried many such articles about the importance of religious instruction

for small children that emphasized the crucial role of mothers. Even more important 7 Dana L. Robert , "Mount Holyoke Women and the Dutch Reformed Church Mission Movement, 1874-1904," Missionalia 21.2 (1993) : 109.

8 9

Robert, "Mount Holyoke Women ," 107. De Christen (3 March 1882): 101.

10

De Christen (December 1870): III (emphasis in the original) .

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than the physical care of children was "de geestelijke vorming en opleiding voor het hoogere" (spiritual instruction and shaping for the higher good), as a ORe minister claimed in 1882. 11 "Als de moeder niet voor de ziel van haar kind zorgt, wie zal het doen?" (If mothers do not tend the souls of their children, who will?) .12 Mijn moeder, beste gaaf, die God Mijn Teed're kindsheid schonk [...) Wie ooit een plaats wint in mijn hart, Neen, u verdringt niet een, U in wie op't eerst, op moeders schoot Gods liefde mij verscheen. [My mother, best gift that God I gave my tender childhood I Whoever wins a place in my heart I no, none will ever usurp I You in whom first, on mother's lap I God's love appeared to me.]1 3

But in spite of this idealized and restrictive emphasis on motherhood, there was some acknowledgement and even approval of women taking on new roles . In some stories, women now belonged to philanthropic societies or mission-supporting organizations.!" Religious journals sometimes acknowledged the new roles claimed by women , while also rendering them acceptable as extensions ofmotherhood. Thus a founder member ofthe Dorcas Armenhuis was "een moeder [..,] voor de armen" (a mother [..,] for the poor). Similarly, a white missionary's wife was the moeder15

meesteres (,mother-teacher') of her black pupils.

De kerk lijdt groot schade door de vrouw niet de gelegenheid te geven ook voor tc gaan en te spreken, al is het niet in de groote samenkomsten van de gemeente tot leering, dan toch in de vrijere waar aan onbekeerden wordt gearbeid. Niemand die ze gehoord heeft of hij zal moeten toestemmen dat menigmaal de woorden der vrouwen, die op de onbekeerden een beroep deden, of getuigden van hare eigene redden, of om Gods genaade smeekte , zeer treffend en aandoenlijk waren ... [The Church suffers great damage through not giving women the opportunity to also go to the front and speak out. Even though this does not apply to the large meetings of the congregation, then certainly outside where the unconverted are belaboured . No one who has heard

De Christen (29 September 1882): 454; see also De Christen (21 September 1882): 454-55 . De Kerkbode (8 July 1892): 221; see also De Wekker (July 1898): 1. 13 De Wekker (April 1893): 4. 14 De Wekker (June 1887): 24; De Wekker (March 1892): 2. 15 De Kerkbode (31 August 1888): 279; De Wekker (January 1886): 3. Meesteres as it is used here is akin to skoo!meester (schoolmaster). However, as the feminine form of ' master' the word also has obvious connotations in terms of power-relations in a colonial context. 11

12

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Du

TOIT

them will deny that very often women 's words - when appealing to the unconverted, or bearing witness that they themselves were saved, or beseeching God for mercy were very striking and movings

r

The idealization of motherhood and the ambivalent acceptance of women's new roles in Dutch religious journals at the Cape certainly resembled trends in European and North American Protestant evangelicalism. Indeed, stories and religious tracts were often copied from overseas religious journals. Starting in the 1870s, another more conservative trend was also evident as articles on the respective duties of husbands and wives began to appear. Like their North American and European counterparts, DRC ministers emphasized both female moral superiority and the boundaries of women's sphere.!? At first, their writing affirmed male authority, but the emphasis was more on domesticity and the importance of 'home' as the enclave of the family. De Wekker of April 1871 explained "hoe men een gelukkig huisgesin vormen kan" (how one can build a happy family). Husbands, "de band des huises" (the bond of the house), were told to invest in domestic comforts (books, an armchair, pictures for the wall), to spend time at home with their wives, to discuss family matters. Wives were urged to keep their home neat and clean, and to await their spouses "met een vriendelijk gelaat" (with a friendly countenance ).18

o Zalig huis! Waar man en vrouw vereend In eenen geest, Naar 's Heeren Wetten handlen [...]19 (Oh Blessed house! Where man and woman united / One in spirit / live out the Lord' s Laws...)

This celebration of domesticity was probably related to the growth of Dutch-Afrikaans petty-bourgeois, small-town society, in which the clergy played an important role .?" Tessie Liu has also argued that "the Victorian cult of domesticity in the

16

De Christen (24 November 1882): 551-52.

Jane Rendall, The Origins of Modern Feminism: Women in Britain, France and the United States, 1780-1860 (London: Macmillan , 1985): 79. 18 De Wekker(ApriI1871): 126. 17

De Wekker (August 1880): 48. Leonore Davidoff & Catherine Hall argue that one of the strongest strands binding together the English "middling" classes "was the commitment to an imperative moral code and the reworking of their domestic world into a proper setting for its practice." If women were not at first confined within this domestic sphere, the home was "strongly associated with a form of femininity 19

20

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colonial world must be seen in the context of demarcations between groups." It elevated white women to civilizati on's guardians whilst confining them within narrow spheres." But from the 1880 s onwards, the religious discourse of the OR C explicitly reflected churchmen 's concern that women should maint ain their proper place in the gender hierarchy. Men prominent in the church began to pub lish careful explanations that female subservie nce in the family was sanctioned by God. If a general concern about 'sexual anarchy' was lackin g in South Africa, churchmen certainly drew on cons ervative British texts to assert the divine origin of male authority. Writing from Aberdeen in 1882, the ORC minister Von Wielich expounded on male authority in the family. While a happy marriage was characterized by mutu al consultation between spous es, the husband was unequivocally in comm and : [de man] [...] heeft als hoofd des huizes het bestier, de leiding en het gezag van al de leden in handen. Zijn wil moet wet zijn, waaraan allen zich met bereidwillige gehoorzaamheid moeten onde rwe rpe n ... [As the head of the hou sehold the husband is the master, the leader and the authori ty ove r all family mem bers. His will must be law, to which all must subj ect themse lves with wi lling obedience jf Het geluk des mans ligt grootlijks in haar magt [...] Onderworpenheid is voor den trotschen geest zeer moeilijk ; ja zij is onmogelijk; en toch zonder onderworpenheid van de kant der vrouw, zaI geluk nooit des mans deel zijn. Onderwerping is de plicht der vrouw ... [Man 's happiness is greatly in her power [...]. For the proud spirit, subjection is very difficult, yes, even impossible. And yet without subjection from the woman/wi fe, the husband will never be happy. Subjection is woman 's/the wife's dutyf 3

which was becoming the hallmark of the middle class" ; Davidoff & Hall, Family Fortu nes: Men and Women ofthe English Middle Class. 1780-1850 (1987 ; London: Routledge, 1988): 25. 21 Tessie Liu, 'T eaching Differences Among Women from a Historical Perspective: Rethinking Race and Gender as Social Categories ," Women 's Studies International Forum 14.4 ( 1991): 272. Liu argues that "b ifurcated visions of womanhood" were characteristic of colonial societies. Wome n of European descent were elevated to the guardians of white civilization. The "struc ture of colonial race privileges focused particularly on limiting access to European status" so "the elevation of white wome n as civi lization's guardians also confined them within narrow spheres. As reproducers of the ruling elite, they established through their daily actions the boundaries of their group identity; hence their behavio r carne under group scrutiny." She then discusses "the images and treatment of colonized women" which "resulted from more complex proje ctions. On the one hand, colonized women were not viewed as women at all in the European sense; they were spared neither harsh labour nor harsh punis hment. On the other hand, as the reproducers of the labour force, colonized wome n were valued as one might value a prize broodmarc . Equally, men of European descent eroticized colonized women as exotic, socially prohibited, but available and subjugated sexual objects" (272). 22

De Christen (15 Septembe r 1882): 435.

23

De Kerkbode (8 June 1894): 625. In Dutch and Afrikaans,

I'roUIV =

' wife' and 'woman.'

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172

Women were reminded that disobeying their husbands meant disobedience to Christ, and told to teach themselves humility, meekness and subservience: De vrouw behoort niet te vergeten [...] dat Hij hare ongehoorzaamheid beschouwt als tegen zijn gezag, en op hare onvriendelijkheid jegens haren man ziet als een bedroeven van zijne liefde. Mijne zuster, het is uw plicht om onderworpenheid , om des Heeren wil te leeren, om in te ademen en aan den dag te leggen een zachtrnoedigen, nederigen, onderworpenen geest, een geest die alles om des gewetens wille zal toegeven, mits gij, dit doende, niet tegen God zondigt [...][A wife should never forget [...] that God regards her disobedience as opposed to his authority, and sees unfriendliness against her husband as a rejection of his [God's] love. My sister, it is your duty to learn subjection for God's sake, to take into yourself a meek, humble, submissive spirit and live accordingly. A spirit that submits in every regard as long as you, while doing so, do not sin against God] 24

It was within this construction of femininity that mothers were called on to convert

their families. Writers again idealized and glorified the spiritual duties of the huismoeder ('house-mother'):

o moeders!

uwe roeping is heerlijk, kostelijker dan al de schatten der wereld. Gij

oefent een invloed op uwe huisgenoten uit, die niemand ter wereld kan keeren ... [0 mothers! Your calling is wonderful, more precious than all the treasures of the world. You exercise an influence over your family that no one in the world can prevent] 25 Na eenen rusteloozen nacht worden wij voor den dag wakker gemaakt door een lastig kindje, dat wij niet weer in slaap kunnen sussen, en daar is het werk van het dag aangevangen , en dikwijls, dikwijls gaan de uren voorbij, en wij kunnen niet eens een ogenblik vinden om letterlik naar onze binnen-kamer te gaan om te bidden. Meer dan een predikant [...] voor wien toch eindelijk eene stille ure komt, zal dit in twijfel trekken. Weinige moeders zullen het doen. Vrouwenwerk komt nooit op een end. Hoe zalig dan te weten dat, als wij niet tijd hebben om naar onze binnenkamer te gaan, om onze Heiland te ontrnoeten, IIij gewillig is om tot ons te komen in onze kinderkamer, in onze keuken, [...] en overal waar wij werken en roept [...]. Wij kunnen, zoo wij willen, aan Zijne voeten zitten, met onze kinderen in onze armen, ons werk in onze handen ... [After a restless night we are woken before daybreak by a difficult child that we can not lull to sleep, and already the day's work has begun, and often,

24 De Kerkbode (8 June 1894): 625. See also Het Christelijk Huisgezin by A. Dreyer, "Zendeling der Ned. Ger. Kerk" [Missionary of the DRe], published by the author in 1898. Dreyer introduced his subject thus: "What is the Family? It is a small kingdom. The father is its head, and he takes upon him authority that is bestowed in wisdom and executed with love" (I; my translation). 25 De Christen (15 September 1882): 434.

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often, hours go by and we cannot find even one moment to go to our room and pray. Mor e than one minister [...] for whom after all a quiet hour arrives , would doubt this . Few mothers would. Woman's work is never done . How blessed then the knowledge that when we have no time to go to our room to meet our Lord, He is willing to come to us in the nursery, the kitchen [...] We could, if we wanted to, sit at His feet, with our children in our arms , our work in our hands]

26

daar uwe brieven mij al veel ten zegen zijn gewee st, zoo kan ik niet langer swij gen [...] De Wekker is mij den laatsten tijd al dierbaarder geworden, vooral daar zij veel melding maakt van de zeer belangrijke Zendingzaak [...] 0 Zuster, wij kennen elkander niet. Maar laten wij in den Geest zamenwerken voor onzer Konin g! [your letters have been such a blessing to me that I can no longer remain silent [...] In the last while De Wekker has become ever more dear to me, especially as it [lit. she] frequentl y deals with the so very important missionary effort . 0 Sister, we know each other not. But let us work together in the spirit for our King!] 27 Op die dorp het dit heelwat opspraak verwek : Diegene wat reeds in boeke en tydskrifte gelees het van sulke verskynsels soos vroue op universiteit en wat deur die Illustrated London News e.d.m. op hoogte gebly het van die nuwe beroer ings van die Ferniniste, was dan ig daarmee . Maar daar was ook kopskudders. Ek het cendag saam met Ma na ' n winkel gegaan om te kyk na linne vir my ' uitrusting' [...] Die winkelbaas was mill. George Raven scroft. B y was ' n goeie men s en ' n vriendelike buurman; maar iets soos ' n ' gcleerdc' meisie was vir hom darem teen die natuur. "Ja," se hy, onderwyl hy die stuk linne op die toonbank oopslaan. "Ta Annie laat seker j ou kinde rs leer sodat hullc mans kan kry."

Ma kyk hom met waardigheid aan . Jy sou aan haar houding gese het dat die SuidAfrik aanse Kollege al 'n lang reeks meisies aan haar te danke had. "Ek laat hulle leer," antwoord sy, "om sonder mans klaar te kom as hulle wil." Dit was vir daard ie dae nogal stoute skoene aantrek, en my rna was (in teorie) 'n hater van ' mannetj iesvroue'; maar die aantyging het in haar die feminis wakker gemaak . In elke vrou - dit is my ondervinding - skuil dit, maar in sommige, by wie die slaapgoed te verdowend is, word dit nooit wakker nie. [In town the news was much talked about. Those already familiar from book s and maga zines with the phenomenon of women attending university, and who followed the new stirrings of the Feminists through the Illustrated London News etc., were pleased. But others shook their heads .

26 De Wekker (October 1883, p.I97, original emphasis. See also "Afgezonderd," De Kerkbode (31 August 1888): 227-28, although this celebration of women 's domestic duties was published without the writer' s name, and likewise "Deborahs boodskap ," De Wekker (March 1895): I. 27 De Wekker (Octob er 1896): 2-3.

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TOI T

One day Ma and I went shopping for my new ' outfit' [...]. The shop owner was Mr George Ravenscroft. He was a good man and a friendly neighbour, but according to him the idea of an ' educated girl' was against nature. " Yes," he said, while he unfolded the linen on the counter. " I suppose Aunt Annie is giving your children an education so they will get husbands." Ma looked at him with dignity. You would have said that the South African College already owed a long series of girls to her. "I let them study," she answered, "so that they can do without men if they wish to."

In those days this was rather daring, and (theoretically) my mother hated the ' men-women;' but his allegation awakened the feminist in her. In every woman - this is my experience - she hides, only some are too drugged to awaken.] 28

Conclusion ' Moedermeesteres' - the word coined by a writer in De Wekker to praise a female mission ary - designated the latter as mother, female teacher and mistress of her ' native' pupil s.i" Such approbation suggests gendered, colonial relations of power, where a mistress who imparts the superior domesticity of a colonizing culture also clai ms fe m al e agency. I h ave not attemp te d h ere to explo re the colo n ial context of

Dutch-Afrikaans women's religiosity - although examining how Dutch-Afrikaans women's susterkap intersected with their relative power as nooPo in mistressservant relationships would indeed be fascinating. Instead, I have researched the context that provided the women who spoke out and worked a racially and ethnically defined Afrikaner nationalism from the early twentieth century with their first experiences of public action and organization .'!

28 Maria Elizabeth Rothmann, My Beskeie Deel: 'n Outobiografiese Vertelling (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1976): 73. 29 De Wekker (January 1886): 3.

30 The Afrikaans word for 'mi stress,' nooi, is the feminine equivalent of the better-known baas and has strong connotations of racialized paternalism. Many rural Dutch-Afrikaans families involved their later servants in family devotion. 3 1 See Marijke Du Toit, "Women, Welfare and the Nurturing of Afrikaner Nationalism: A Social History of the Afrikaanse Christelike Vroue Vereniging, c. 1870-1939" (doctoral dissertation, University of Cape Town, 1996). In my doctoral dissertation "The Nurturing of Afrikaner Nationalism: A Social History of the Afrikaanse Christelike Vroue Vereniging, 1904- 1939," I argue that Afrikaans women were centrally involved in the construction of Afrikaner nationalist discourse. I explore their promotion of an ethnic and racially defined nationalism through phil-

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WORKS CITED Bradlow, Edna. "Women and Education in Nineteenth -Century South Africa: The Attitudes and Experiences of Middle-Clas s English-Speaking Females at the Cape," South African Historical Journal 28 (1993): 119-50. Brink, Elsabe . "Man-Made Women: Gender, Class and the Ideology of the Volksmoeder," in Women and Gender in Southern African to 1945, ed. Cheryl Walker (Claremont: David Philip, 1990): 273-92. Crafford, Dionne. Aan God die Dank (Pretoria: N.G Kerk, 1982). Cronje, J.M. Vrouemet Nardusparfuum (Pretoria: N.G Kerk, 1984). Davidoff, Leonore, & Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780- 1850 (London: Routledge, 1988). Dreyer, Andries . Historisch Album van de Nederduitsche Gereformeerde Kerk in Zuid Afrika (Cape Town: Cape Times, 1912). Du Toit, Andre. "The Cape Afrikaners ' Failed Liberal Moment," in Democratic Liberalism in South Africa : Its History and Prospect, ed. Jeffrey Butler, Richard Elphick & David Welsh (Middletown CT: Wesleyan UP, 1987): 35--63. -

-. "No Chosen People: The Myth of the Calvinist Origins of Afrikaner Nationalism and Racial Ideology," American Historical Review 88 (1983): 920-52.

Du Toit, Marijke. "Women , Welfare and the Nurturing of Afrikaner Nationalism: A Social History of the Afrikaanse Christelike Vroue Vereniging, c.1870-1939" (doctoral dissertation, University of Cape Town, 1996). Epstein, B.L. The Politics ofDomesticity (Middletown CT: Wesleyan UP, 1981). Gaitskell, Deborah , & Elaine Unterhalter. "Mothers of the Nation : A Comparative Analysis of Nation, Race and Motherhood in Afrikaner Nationalism and the African National Congres s," in Woman- Nation -State, cd. Nira Yuval-Davis & Floya Anthias (London : Macmillan, 1989): 58-78. Giliomee, Hermann . 'The Beginnings of Afrikaner Nationalism, 1870-1915," South African Historica l Journal 19 (1987) : 115-42 . Hall, Catherine . "From Greenland' s Icy Mountains to Afric's Golden Sand: Ethnicity, Race and Nation in Mid-Nineteenth Century England," Gender and History 5.2 (1993): 212-30. Hexham , Irving. 'Totalitarian Calvinism : The Reformed (Dopper) Community in South Africa, 1902-1919" (doctoral dissertation . University of Bristol, 1975). Hugo, GE. "Die Voorgeskiedenis van die Godsdienstige Herlewing op Worcester in 1860-1861" (BD thesis, University of Stellenbosch, 1952).

anthropic and party-political activities. I show that a large number of the female Afrikaner nationalists active immediate ly after the South African War of 1899-1902 were products of the women's seminaries started by the DRC and of mission-support organizations.

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Kruger, Lou-Marie. "Gender, Com munity and Identity: Women and Afrikaner Nationalism in the Volksmoeder Discourse of Die Boerevrou, 1919-193 1" (MA thesis, Univers ity of Cape Town, 1991). Liu, Tessie. "Teaching Differences among Women from a Historical Perspective: rethink ing Race and Gender as Social Categories," Women s Studies International Forum 14.4 (1991): 265- 94. Ma1herbe, E.G Education in South Africa. 1652-1 922 (Cape Town: Juta, 1925). McCarthy, Kathleen D, ed. Lady Bountiful Revisited. Women, Philanthropy and Power (New Brunswick NJ : Rutgers UP, 1990). Moodie, Dunbar T. The Rise ofAfrikanerdom, Power, Apartheid and the Afri kaner Civil Religion (Berkeley: U of California P, 1975). Pienaar, P.J. Ella Neethling Deur Haar Suster (Noorder Paar1: Paarl Drukper s, 1927). Prochaska , F.K. Women and Philan thropy in Nineteenth Century England (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980). Rendall, Jane. The Origins of Modern Feminism: Women in Britain, France and the United States,

1780- 1860 (London : Macmillan, 1985). Robert, Dana L. "Mount Holyoke Women and the Dutch Reformed Church Mission Movement, 1874-1 904," Missionalia 21.2 (1993): 103- 23. Ross, Robert. "The Fundam enta1ization of Afrikaner Calvinism," in Onderscheid en Minderheid:

Sociaal-historische Opstellen over Discriminatie en Vooroordeel aangeboden aan Professor Dik van Arkel, cd. H. Diederiks & C. Zuispe1(Hi1versum: Verlore, 1987): 00-00. Rothmann, Maria Elizabeth. My Beskeie Deel: 'n Outobiografiese Vertelling (Cape Town: Tafe1berg, 1976). Scott, Anne F. " Women's Voluntary Organizations: from Charity to Reform," in Lady Bountiful

Revisited: Women, Philanthropy and Power, ed. K.E. McCarthy (New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers UP, 1990). Showalter, Elaine. Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Steele (London: Bloomsb ury, 1991). Spijker, A.B . De Geschiedenis van den Vrouwen Zending Bond ofWat God Gewrocht Heeji, 18891906 (Stellenbosch: Pre Ecclesia Drukkerij, [1906]). Van Heerde, Gerrit Lodewyk . Die Dag van Kleine Dinge (Cape Town: N.G. Kerk, 1955). Van Wijk , A.J. Na Vyf-en-sewentig Jaar (Cape Town: Vroue Sending Bond, [1964]).

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"We were men nursing men" Male Nursing on the Mines in Twentieth-Century South Africa Shula Marks

I

T IS COMMONPLACE to assert that nursing is a profoundly gendered profes-

sion. The term itself derives from women's roles as mothers and nurturers. Since the days of Florence Nightingale, the icon of modem professional nurs-

ing, nursing leaders have insisted on the intrinsic link between nursing and femininity. Not only has nursing been regarded as quintessentially "women's work"; in contemporary South Africa, as in Britain and America, the public image of the nurse focuses on "those characteristics consensually endorsed as being feminine ." This

stereotype assumes the existence of ' essential' psychological differences between men and women, and assert the peculiar fitness of women for nurturing and nursing, compassion and caring, self-sacrifice and subordination .' Yet there have always been men in nursing or, to be more precise, in certain sectors of the profession - in the army and prisons, in mental asylums and in industrial settings, most notably, in the South African case, in the mines . The gendered nature of the profession may well be clearer if we look at what happens to men in nursing than if we look at what happens to women . Yet, as Catherine Bums has recently poi nted out, men have been curiously invisible in the histories of nursing, especially in South Africa.i where their numbers have always been extremely low I Keith Soothill, Christine Henry & Kevin Kendrick, ed. Themes and Perspectives in Nursing (London: Chapman & Hall, 1992): 25 2 Catherine Bums , '" A man is a clumsy thing who does not know how to handle a sick person' : Aspects of the History of Masculinity and Race in the Shaping of Male Nursing in South Africa," Journal of Southern Afr ican Studies 24.4 (1998): 695-717. This was published after the presentation of the original version of my paper to the University of the Western Cape conference

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and the sectors in which they have been employed hidd en from the wider public gaze. Indeed, today many South Africa ns are amazed to be told that there have always been men in nursing, and that for much of the twentieth century they carried the main burden of nursing in the mine hospitals, especially the black mine hospitals, where female nurs es have only entered in any number since the 1970s. If modern nursing is a peculiarl y female profession , the mine, as Keith Breckenridge has recentl y reminded us;' is a profoundly male space, a space where "the ideals and practic es of manhood that have dominated South Africa in this century" have been forged. "The gold mines," he suggests, "fas hioned explicitly racial masculinities and monitored [the] legal, economic and geographical boundary [sic] between them.?" In addition to the violence which was an essential part of the definition of [these] racial identities," at the heart of the relationship between the black and white underground "was the mutu al recognition of what it meant to be a man." Thi s "revol ved around physical strength and courage und erground. t''' Thi s essay look s at the largely untold story of male nursin g on the mine s, and question s the gender stereotypes that have come to characterize nursing in South Africa as elsewhere. These stereotypes are as prevalent among feminists as they are among the general publ ic, yet they are, as Christine Delphy has pointed out , based on an ' essentialist' psychology. Th is ass umes that these 'fe minine' values of caring are share d by all women, irrespective of the society in which they are geographically located, by all women who have ever lived within the same geographical area whatever the epoch, and by all women who live in the same country at the same time whatever their social backgr ound.s

Moreover, for histori ans of colonialism these stereot ypes are doubl y troubling what are called ' feminine values' are in fact

on "Gender and Colonialism in Southern Africa" in January 1997 and, in a slightly different form, to the internat ional nurses' conference, "Nursing at the Cutting Edge," held in Durban in December 1996, as well as at the conference on the history of nursing held at Nottingham in July 1997. 3 Keith Breckenridge, "The Allure of Violence: Men , Race and Masculinity on the South Africa n Goldmines, 1900-1950," Journal ofSouthern African Studies 24.4 (1998 ; special issue on Masculinities in Southern Africa edited by Robert Morrell): 669-94. 4

5

Breckenridge, 'T he Allure of Violence," 669. Breckenridge, "The Allure of Violence," 669.

6 Christine Delphy, "Mother' s Union"," Trouble and Strife 24 (Summe r 1992): 18; Joan W. Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," American Historical Review 9 1.5 (December 1986): 1053-75.

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a collection of very specific values, which correspond more or less to those of western housewives of the last half century; and they [...] then project [...] these values on to all the women of the world across all the centuries. In addition these values correspond only "more or less" to those of western housewives, since the authors speak more of the norm s than of reality.?

These stereotypes are not only essentialist in relation to women 's capacitie s, however; they are equall y essentialist in relation to men. Ifwomen are uniquel y fitted to be nurses - where does that leave men? Are they less caring , by their very nature , less responsible intrinsically, less empathetic biologically? Are they really - as a writer in the Nursing Mirror asserted in words reminiscent of tho se so often applied to black female nurses in South Africa - "inferior nurses"?" In many ways, the arguments about women 's 'essential nature' can be addressed by looking at men in nursing, for if we are seriou s about nursing as a gendered profes sion , then what happens to male prov iders of nursin g care may in fact illuminate these issues quite dramatically. In fact, in the confined and assertively male space of South Africa's black mine hospitals, where black and white men have only relatively recently been replaced as the main pro viders of health care, the simple binaries of 'fe minine' and ' masculine' attributes give way to complex and differentiated meanings of race, class and gender hierarch ies over time. Exp loring these meanin gs is not a purely academic enterprise. If the numbers of fully qual ified black male nurses - on the mines as elsewhere - were always minute, and the role of the trained but un-professionalized skilled black health workers consistently undervalued , this essay argues that the underrated and unsun g black mine orderlies , drawn from the migrant work-force and trained on the j ob, may neverthel ess provide important lessons for black nursing in a post-apartheid health serv ice.

7

Delphy, "Mother' s Union?," 18.

l owe this phrase to Catherine Bums' s paper presented to a conference on Masculinities in Pietermaritzburg, July 1997: '" A man is a clumsy thing who does not know how to handle a sick person' : Masculinity and Male nurses in South Africa, 1900-1 948," and published in the revised form (without this quotation)in the Journal of Southern African Studies 24.4 (1998), cited above. She was citing Claire Wallace' s article "Danger: Male Nurses," as quoted in Evelyn R. Anderson, The Role ofthe Nurse: Views ofthe Patient, Nurse and Doctor in Some Hosp itals in England (London: Royal College of Nursing, 1973): 90. For the South African resonances, see my Divided Sisterhood: Race, Class and Gender in the South African Nursing Prof ession (Basingstoke & Johannesburg: Macmillan, 1994): 146. S

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Nursing in South Africa: some statistics In South Africa, as in many other countries, nursing has been and remains - together with teaching - the most important profession for women. Unlike in the teaching profession, however, in nursing women still dominate in numbers and leadership. For much of the twentieth century it has provided the main ladder of opportunity for black as well as white women in South Africa. Moreover, over the past half century there has been a dramatic change in the racial character of the country's nursing profession. In 1948 there were only 800 fully qualified black nurses; today most of the c.175,000 nurses registered with the Nursing Council are black." Change in the gendered nature of the profession has, however, been far slower; nursing was - and still largely sees itself - as a sisterhood, if a divided one. Thus, one aspect of nursing that has remained largely unchallenged from the end of the nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century is its gendered nature. This division of labour has been so entrenched that it has been largely taken for granted in the literature for and about nursing, as also in state discourse. Nor were these gendered stereotypes restricted to settler perceptions . In the 1930s, a Transkeian councillor is reported in a Department of Public Health report (1949) as saying: I have never known men trained as nurses. A man is a clums y thing who does not know how to handle a sick person [...] Nursing is the proper profession for women . They are created for that purpo se.

In similar fashion, in an interview in April 1996, the late Grace Mashaba, eminent professor of Nursing in KwaZulu-Natal and author of a book on black nurses in South Africa, was asked whether any of her sons had followed her into nursing. She replied that unfortunately there were no role models for male nurses in the country, a matter she thought needed further attention.!'' At first sight, Professor Mashaba's reaction is hardly surprising: for most of the twentieth century no more than five percent of South Africa's nurses have been men. In 1946, there were only 247 male nurses on the first register of the South African Nursing Council, out of a total of 10,697 registered nurses in the Union; in 1960

9 The numbers have dropped since the mid-I 990s, when there were about 180,000; Health Systems Trust, Update 11 (October 1995). The high risk of exposure to HIV-positive patients is said to be one of the reasons. 10 Janine Simon, "Nursing veteran tells the story of her profession," The Star (17 April 1996). This article concerns T.G. Mashaba , Rising to the Challenge ofChange: A History ofBlack Nursing in South Africa (Kenwyn : Juta, 1995). Mashaba deals with male nurses in passing.

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their number had grown to 535 out of a total of 24,096, almost all of them white. Even these small numbers seem to have declined thereafter. In the 1970s, there was still widespread concern at the shortage of white male nurses, as the demand increased from the army and in psychiatric hosp itals, both traditional employers of male nurses, and the mining industry continued to find difficulty in replacing their senior white male nurses. As we shall see, it was in this period that black mine hospitals - up to that point regarded as quintessentially male spaces - were forced to tum to black women who had qualified as professional nurses outside the mine hospitals . It is only since the 1980s that the numbers of professional black male nurses have grown very slightly with the dramatic increase in male unemployment in other sectors of the economy. 1I

Establishment of mine hospitals The small number of black men entering the nursing profession in the twentieth century and their lack of role models was not a foregone conclusion. However, if indeed the comparison is with the rest of Africa, rather than Europe or America, the absence of African men from nursing is even more surprising . For in most of colonial Africa, the first dispensers, nursing aids and nursing orderlies were young men, not young women, and in the nineteenth-century Cape Colony, too, there were sporadic, yet in the end abortive, attempts to train African male nurses. In most of the British colon ies in Africa, the establishment of nursing training for women largely postdates the Second World War or even independence, when new employment opportunities opened up for men, and education for African girls became more widely available. Thus, the dominance of women in professional nursing in twentieth-century South Africa has to be related both to the gendered model of professionalized nursing imported from the metropole with its resonances in settler society and the particularities of its racialized and gendered political economy. Despite the earlier experiments, it was only in 1931 that an African school-teacher, Ramosolo Paul Tsae, passed the South African Medical Council examination for Male Nurses and was duly admitted to the nurses' register. 12 II Charlotte Searle, The History of the Development of Nursing in South Africa, 1652~/960 (Cape Town: C. Stroik , 1965): 308- 12; Searle, Towards Excellence: The Centenary ofState Registration for Nurses and Midwives in South Africa, 1891-1991 (Durban : Butterworths, 1991): 188, 220,253 ,301.

12 Searle, The History ofthe Development of Nursing in South Africa, 273. The earlier attempt s were by Dr John Fitzgerald at Grey's Hospital in King William ' s Town, where in 1892 Enoch Rhai,

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If early experiments in training black men as profe ssional nurses soon foundered , in the twentieth centu ry hosp itals for black miners provided the most important space for the deployment of male nursing skills. By the earl y twentieth century, mine hospitals were segre gated; hospitals run for white miners were generally provided by Benefit Societie s, and the nurses were for the most part white and female. Hosp itals for black miners were establi shed by the minin g industry under pressure from the state , and from the first nursing care was - with few exceptions (discussed below) and until comparatively recentl y - provided by black male orderlies working und er the instruction of white male supervisors of indeterminate training. It was in the context of devastating health conditions for miners, black and

white, that the first hospitals were established on the gold mines in the early years of the century. As Rosner and Markowitz remark in the introduction to their aptly titled collection on workers' safet y and health in twentieth-century America, Dying for

Work, "the exploitation of labour is measured not onl y in long hours of work and lost dollars but also in short ened lives, high disease rates and painful injuries.l' And nowhere was, and is, this more graphically true than in the gold-mining industry of South Africa. Ever since the discovery of vast seams of und erground gold on the Witwatersrand in the 1880s, the mines have taken a tremendous toll of the bodies of the mill ion s of young men, white and black, emplo yed in digging the refractory ore from the bowel s of the earth . From the out set, the deep levels ofthe ore, intense heat and high dust-levels made mining on the Witwatersrand extremely hazardous.l" Afte r the South Afric an War of 1899-1902, the British administration, which had taken over the Transvaal, began to pay some attention to health conditions on described as "male native nurse," lost his job when trained white (female) nurses were introduced, and under Dr Neil MacVicar at Victoria Hospital, Alice (Lovedale), who tried to train black male orderlies as well as black female nurses, but gave up the attempt in the face of the hostility of the medical profession. (See Cape Archives, Colonial Office, CO 1524, King William's Town Hospital, 1892, passim, and Rhodes University, Grahamstown, Pr 3085, Macvicar papers: Neil Macvicar, TSS "Memorandum on the training of native medical assistants," c.1937.) 13 David Rosner & Gerald Markowitz. Dying fo r Work: Workers ' Safety and Health in 20th Century America (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987): ix. 14 For the health effects on white miners, see Elaine Katz, The White Death: Silicosis on the Witwatersrand Gold Mines, 1886-1 910 (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand UP, 1994). Randall Packard has dealt with the impact ofT B on black miners in his White Plague, Black Labour: Tuberculosis and the Political Economy of Health and Disease in South Africa (London & Berkeley: U of California P, 1989j. For the early years on the mines, see J.1. Baker, 'T he Silent Crisis. Black Labour, Disease and the Economics and Politics of Health on the South African Gold Mines, 1902-30" (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada, 1989).

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the mines, partly in an attempt to deflect the criticism aroused by the importation of Chinese indentured labour to resolve the labour shortage on the mines, partly to address the needs ofAfrican workers. Despite these attempts, however, the mortality and morbidity rates for African miners remained inordinately and shockingly high. It was only after Union in 1910, when confronted by the very real possibility that their crucial "tropical labour" would be cut off, that the mine magnates began to take the health problems of their black workers more seriously. In the context of concerted state pressure and the threat posed by its prohibition in 1913 of all recruiting of labour north of 22° south latitude, Rand Mines / Central Mining, the group with the largest stake on the Rand, decided to invite Major Gorgas, who had dramatically reduced yellow fever on the Panama Canal, to South Africa in order to advise the mines on how to reduce mortalityl ' Gorgas arrived at the end of 1913 and three months later issued a hard-hitting and wide-ranging report . Highly critical of the migrant-labour system as well as the living conditions of the men, he favoured settling the workers in married quarters in villages attached to the mines, a suggestion which was far too radical for implementation then or later. At the same time he made specific recommendations for the improvement of hospital services. He argued that the hospitals on the mines should be centralized and completely reorganized, providing for more specialized, full-time medical services and professional nursing.!" Although relatively few of Gorgas's recommendations were realized, the Central Mining-Rand Mines group decided to follow his proposals for a centralized health service and appointed Dr A.J . Orenstein as "Sanitary Superintendent" to control all health services on their mines . He was soon to make his mark on the Witwatersrand. The Native Grievances Enquiry of 1913 also stressed the need for trained nursing staff in mine hospitals, and in 1916 the first legislation to provide training for white male hospital superintendents was gazetted. Despite the objections of several of the mine doctors that it was unreasonable to expect white men to have to undergo the same length of training as professional female nurses - after all, they

15 Alan Patrick Cartwright, Doctors ofthe Mines: A Commemorative Volume to Mark the 50th Anniversary of the Mine Medical Officers ' Association of South Africa (Cape Town: Purnell, 1971): 30. I have dealt more fully with this background in an unpublished paper, '" These men are dying like flies' : The Origins of Health Care on the Mines of the Witwatersrand, 1902-1915 ," presented to the Social History of Medicine conference on "Health in the City," Liverpool, 4-7 September 1997. 16 Cartwright, Doctors ofthe Mines, 35-38 .

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were only treating natives! " - this was the beginning of professional training for male white nurses on the mines. Relatively few of the first trainees - drawn from the existing white superintendents in the mine hospitals - had Afrikaans narnes.l'' The systemat ic train ing of black male orderlies had to wait until after the war. 19

Women nurses in mine hospitals With the outbreak of the Great War, the dominance of English-speaking male nurses in the mine hospitals posed a problem: at the very time that the industry was beginning to reform its hospital system, some of its most experienced white male nurses left to join the British army. Faced with this situation , Orenstein , who believed -like many of his contemporaries - that women made far better nurses than men and that female nurses would be better trained and more effective than their male counterparts , advocated the employment of white sisters to train black female probationers on the mines . The consequent experiment cal1ed down a barrage of criticism. As the Secretary of Mines proclaimed indignantly to the Secretary for Native Affairs in response to a letter from an outraged member of the public : "It is thought that the practice of employing female European nurses in native mine hospitals is undesirable beyond dispute.v'? The Minister of Mines and Industries regarded this "as a dangerous experiment which should not in his opinion be repeated until more is known of its practical effects ," while , despite the assurances of his civil servants, the Prime Minister insisted nervously that the Director of Native Labour "be good enough to keep a close eye on the experiment and from time to time let us know any new facts or developments which come under his notice.,,21 Neither the Secretary for Native Affairs nor the Director of Native Labour, who had the most direct knowledge of the experiment, shared these anxieties. As the Secretary for Native Affairs, the old Cape liberal Edward Dower, remarked tartl y when the alarm was first raised : "I was not aware that there has been any evidence of the danger of so cal1ed black peril being accentuated through the employment of

\7 18

Chamber of Mines Archive 1915. Chamber of Mines Archive 1990.

19 Bum s, '" A man is a clumsy thing who does not know how to handle a sick person' ," 704707. Bums discusses the tortuous debates between 1914 and the late 1920s over the appropriate training for black male health workers. 20 Department of Native Affairs, 1915. 2\

Department of Native Affairs, 1916a/b.

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Male Nursing in South African Mines

185

white women in nursing Native patients.'.z2 The Acting Director of Native Labour, H.S. Cooke, was equally reassuring . Aware of possible criticism, he had gone fully into the "the important principles involved in the departure from accepted practice," and had personally inspected the hospital. His report is fascinating not only for the detail it provides of actual nursing care in the hospital, but also for its juxtaposition of gender, racial and class ideology: It may I think be postulated [he wrote] that the employment of female nurses for the

care of the sick and injured, be they European or coloured, has from the medical point of view everything to commend it and that the question must be examined with a view to determine whether the relationship of nurse to native patient is such as would impair the prestige of the European female and directly or indirectly increase the danger of the so-called "black peril."

Lest his superiors fear the effects of"white hands on black bodies," he described the racial and gendered division of nursing labour at Crown Mines at some length: The staff of the hospital at present consists of a European matron, three European female nurses, two European male assistants and six native female nurses. The European female nurses are in effect supervisors. As a general practice they do not touch a native patient [my itals]. Their duties include the general supervision of and

responsibility for the cleanliness of the wards and equipment, regular administration of drugs and stimulants, taking of temperatures etc. etc. The actual work in connection with these duties is performed by the native female nurses who are competent native women for the most part trained at the Lovedale Institute, and who fulfil all the duties ordinarily entrusted to nurses at a hospital. The female staff deals only with the wards in which sick natives and those seriously injured are accommodated . The wards containing convalescent natives and those who have sustained minor injuries are under male control [...] The European female nurses live with the matron in quarters outside the hospital and when on night duty are escorted to and from the hospital. The native female nurses have specially arranged cubicles on the hospital premises, the arrangements made for their supervision and privacy are all that could be desired. They are of a superior class and appear to have a real sense of their status as professional nurses. The European nurses to whom I have spoken individually have each had considerable experience and training. They informed me that their duties were particularly agreeable to them, that the natives were remarkably docile, respectful and apprecia-

22

Department of Native Affairs 1915.

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SI-IU LA MARKS

tive , and that in no single instance had they been subjected to insult or even discourtesy by the native patients.P

Cooke found that many of the mine-workers were somewhat unhappy at being washed by a female nurse. This was a recurring theme in the history of mine nursing: as one of my informants, who had worked as an orderly on the mines, put it: "Men did not like female nurses fiddling with their private parts .,,24 But the Acting Director of Labour brushed this aside airily: "This objection is frequently shared by Europeans in regard to white nurses, it disappears at an early stage of an illness and need not be seriously regarded .t'P Despite the initial anxieties , the Crown Mines nurses were soon pronounced a great success and by May 1917 General Botha himself was moved to express his "keen interest" in the experiment and his good wishes to the matron and nursing staff; he hoped the venture would "be further developed and extended .Y" By 1919, Modder B and City Deep, also in the Rand Mines group, had followed the Crown Mines example, and employed a white matron and sisters to train black probationers. Quite apart from the stereotypical view of nursing as more appropriately and effectively pursued by women than men, there were real financial incentives to the employment of women in the mine hospitals . In the interwar years, matrons earned around £25 .30 a month, and qualified white sisters between £10 and £15.27 White male salaries were far higher on every level. White male superintendents earned between £30 and £37 a month, while even unqualified white male nursing attendants earned considerably more than trained sisters; their starting salaries were normally £17 .50 to £20 a month .28 If white wages were differentiated by gender, this was paralleled by a racial hierarchy in pay. Salaries for black staff were dramatically lower, whether for male orderlies and nurses trained on the job or for female probat ioners and staff nurses. African female probationers received £2 until the end of their third year when their

23 Department of Native Affairs 1916a. The respectfulne ss of African men towards white nurses - by contra st with the attitude of white men - is a constant refrain in the literature of the time. See Marks, Divided Sisterhood, 55-58. 24 Chamber of Mines 1955b/c.

Department of Native Affairs 1916a. Department of Native Affairs 1917. 27 Barlow-Rand Archives 1942. I am immensely grateful to Mrs Maryna Fraser of the BarlowRand Archive for her invaluable assistance in making my work in the Archive possible. 25 26

28

Barlow-Rand Archives 1919a1b.

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Male Nursing in South African Mines

187

salary rose to £3; on the completion oftheir training they received £4.29 In 1938, the wages of uncertificated African male orderlies or "ward boys" were fixed at a starting rate of Is 8d, rising to a maximum of 2s 8d per shift, while those orderlies with certificates or training received 3/-, rising by 3d a year to maximum of 5/- . Both the daily pay and the amount signalled their lowly status in the hospital hierarchy. Nevertheless, by then the top wages of certificated orderlies equalled those of trained African female nurses, who underwent a far longer period of training.'" One final word on pay: in 1917 full-time medical officers on the mines were paid between £800 and £ 1,200 p.a., usually with free quarters. This was between two and three times the salary of a white female matron, and about twenty times the wages of a black nurse or orderly. Cash clearly signalled who held ultimate power and authority in the hospital, and this was defined by race, class and gender.'!

Disciplining nurses? Given the economic incentives and the ideology surrounding female nursing - as one medical officer put it succinctly in 1911, "women are born nurses and would in addition be less expensive'v? - it is perhaps somewhat surprising that none of the other mines followed the example of Crown Mines, Modder B or City Main Reef. Wages, it turns out, were not the only cost involved in employing female nurses, and in even so cost-conscious an operation as the mining industry it seems there were other considerations. Not only did the hostility of the white public, many mine managers and African mine-workers towards women on the mines - white or black - remain, whatever the economics. There were also practical difficulties in the way of employing female nurses. Separate housing was still regarded as crucial for female nurses, white and black, and transport to the more outlying mines was an additional expense.P At the same time, the number of trained African women nurses continued to be small in relation to the wider demand for black nurses, and few of the mines were prepared to go to the expense of training their own.

29

Barlow-Rand Archives 1919c.

30

32

Barlow-Rand Archive 1938. Barlow-Rand Archive 1917. Chamber of Mines Archive , 1911.

33

Barlow-Rand Archive 1921.

31

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188

SHULA MARKS

At least as important in focusing the minds of management on the need to take black male nursing care more seriously, however, were their difficulties in disciplining black female nurses. Contrary to the gendered stereotype of greater female tractability, mine hospitals soon discovered that the expectations of the black female nurses they were training were very different from those of the male orderlies, and this made for friction in the hospitals. While the male orderlies were drawn from the migrant labour-force, and appreciated that the alternative to the work in the hospital was a return to the highly hazardous and arduous rock-face, black female nurses tended to come from the Christian elite . Many were women who could not find a place in the most prestigious mission hospitals, but who nonetheless came from the same educated families as the "Bantu Nightingales" of Victoria Hosp ital, Lovedale .l" Aspirant middle-class nurses could not be dealt with in as summary a fashion by mine management as black male migrants . A list of "grievances" presented by the "native Nurses at Crown Mines" to the Director of Native Labour in August 1921 vividly illustrates the point. Not only did they complain that they were given no refreshment between breakfast at 6.30 a.m. and lunch at midday; they also complained that their food was indifferently cooked and that the cutlery had been removed from the dining room (allegedly after recurrent theft) . In addition, their job prospects were poor and daily leave was often curtailed to one hour only. In a particularly telling example, they also charged that the hospital laundry had stopped taking in their personal belongings and only washed uniforms on their behalf." Orenstein came to the hospital 's defence, in an intervention that captured precisely the class, gender and racial dynamics at work . Like "European nurses, " he explained, African nurses were entitled to send their personal washing - uniform, underwear, aprons and bedclothes - to the laundry, but the trouble has been that certain nurses have their own elaborate pillow-slips and bed-spreads, the washing of which cannot be done in our general laundry. Furthermore, the Matron objects to these girls having such articles in their rooms, and I think she is right. 36

There was a final problem in this litany. In an early - and unsuccessful - bid for sexual equality, the Crown Mine nurses also pointed out indignantly that when two

34 For the class background and aspirations of the African female nurses, see Marks, Divided Sisterhood, ch. 4. 35 Government Native Labour Bureau 1921a. 36 Government Native Labour Bureau 1921a/b.

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Ma le N ursing in Sou th African Mines

of their number (one of them the daughter of a minister) were seduced, the women were dismissed, whereas the men concerned were still employed at Crow n Mines as a clerk and hospital orderly respe ctively. While, as we have seen, the presence of small numbers of white women in the midst of thousands of male miners separated from their families for many months caused great anxiety, Africa n nurses were, of course, far more vulnerable. For Orenstein, however, the facts of the cases were "doubtful," and he responded wearily: Indee d you will appreciate that we are not in a position to go beyond the dismissal of the girls conce rned. If they wan t to bring the alleged guilty parties to book , they have the usual remedy at law, but we canno t retain such girls in training."

The solution propo sed by the hospital establishment was "to employ a dependable middle-aged native woman to take charge of the native nurses' quarters, messing arrangeme nts , &c., with a view to generally supervisi ng them.,,38 Given the inadequacy of the respo nse to the nurses' complaints , it is not surprising that the unrest simme red on, and was dealt with in draconian fashio nr'" Nor did the problem of extramarital pregnancy go away. Over the next few years, sporadic cases of pregnant nurses troubled the Sanitary Superinte ndent, matrons, and Me dical Office rs alike. In Augus t 1922, no fewer than three "Native Female nurses" were returned home pregnant; and, reported the scan dalized Inspector of the Nat ive Affairs Department, "another one has run away from the Hospital in a simi lar cond ition ." "The attendance on the patients wou ld," he thought, [...] be far more satisfactory were a European Hospita l Superintendent, assi sted by a competent Staff of European s and Native Orderlie s, adopt ed . [...] The return of these nurses in such a con dition canno t but reflect adve rse ly and in a prejudicia l manner on the experiment ...40

Once aga in, Oren stein was dismissive: after all, "this sort of thing" was only to be expec ted [...] when one takes into considera tion the native outl ook on this question. I think you wi ll agree with me that it is idle to expect that a few years of civ iliza tion and Christian infl uence can be expected to give a hundred per cent efficiency, as against many

37

Government Native Labour Bureau 192 1a1b.

38

Governme nt Native Labour Bureau 1921alb.

39

For example , see Governme nt Native Labour Bureau 1922a.

40

Government Native Labour Bureau 1922b.

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190

SH UL A M AR K S

centuries of native customs [...] No doubt we shall have some more of these unfortunate occ urrences , but we feel that they must not be allowed to discourage

US . 4 1

The records over the next dozen or so years are peppered with cases of desertion and discharge for insubordin ation, indiscipline or pregnancy. However philo sophical Orenstein may have appeared in his correspondence with state functionaries, by 1934 he was writin g to the Company's lawyers asking whether some penalty could not be introduced in the probationer s' contract for breaches of discipline.V As a result, matron s were now empowered to penalize probationers summarily by confining them to their rooms, curtailing their going out, suspending them from duty, "or [imposing] any other disciplinary penalties as [... she] may deem j ust to impose. "Failure to submit to any penalties imposed by the Matron " would entail "instant disrnissal.t'P This seems to have done the trick, for I have come across no further disciplinary reports in the files. Neverthele ss, news of these tussles doubtles s convinced the remainin g mine hospitals that training black nurses was hardly worth the effort, especially as it would also have meant overcoming the resistance of black miners to female nurses, and they declined to follow the example of the three pioneering Rand Mines. Black male orderli es were, after all, unlikel y to insist on frilly pillo wcases or cutlery at table. Nor were they likely to get pregnant; whatever their sexual life, it did not pose quit e the same kind of contradiction to the dominant patriarchy/" As migrant workers, male orderlies were rightless; however difficult and poorly paid work in the hospitals may have been, for them it was a distinct improvement over working underground. When in 1959 there was a short-lived attempt to organize black male orderlies in an occupational association, this made little headway in the face of the concerted oppo sition of the mining establishment and the apartheid state.45 Contrary to the usual gender stereotype , black male orderlies were likely to prove more 'docile' and ' manageable' than their sisters.

42

Government Native Labour Bureau 1922b/c. Barlow-Rand Archive 1931.

43

Barlow-Rand Archive 1934c.

41

For an account of male sexuality on the mines, see T. Dunbar Moodie, with Vivienne Ndatshe, Going for Gold: Men, Mines and Migration (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand UP, 1994), ch. 4, and Breckenridge, "The Allure of Violence." 44

4;

Chamber of Mines Archive 1959a-d.

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191

Male N ursing in South Af rica n Mines

Black orderlies It was probably a complet e coincidence that the Mine Medical Officers first wrote to the Chamber of Mines advocating improved training for the black orderlies in August 192 I, just as the black female probationers were setting out their grievances. But the timin g was fortunate. Even Orenstein , that ardent advo cate of female nurses, had been somewhat discouraged by the disciplinary problems at Crown Mines and Modder B. Despit e the unfavourable view of black orderlie s held by some of the medical officers in the early years of the century, there is also considerabl e evidence to suggest that many of the black orderlie s were extremely effective in the mine hospitals. Although they had no formal training , many remained in the hospitals long enough to learn the rudiments of nursing on the job . Already in 1911, when the Chamber sent a circular to the medical officers in 34 mining companies asking for their views on the care in the hospital s in their charge, two-third s responded that "native attendants give satisfaction under white superintendents." Moreover, they pinpointed the outstanding advantag es male orderlies had over white emplo yees: "they speak the native languages, understand their [patients'] habits and superstitions, and can be used for work which a white man would not do." They were also very considerably cheaper than their white counterp arts. While some physicians complained that black orderlies only worked when under close supervision, and were liable to sleep on night dut y, the consensus was that they gave every satisfaction and showed great interest in the work. At Kleinfont ein Government Mine, the medical officer maintained that "Carefully selected native attendants give excellent results because they are patient and sympatheti c"; at New Goch, where many orderlies had been on the mine five or six years, there was a similarly positive appra isal." Initially proposed in 1902 and again raised by Gorgas in 1913 and discussed by mine medical officers in 1914, the systematic training of black male orderl ies was more succe ssfull y taken up in 1922 by the newly formed Transvaal Mine Medical Officers' Association. Dedicated to the improvement of the profes sional status of the mine doctors, the Association hoped to do so throu gh the exchange of scientific inform ation and the upgrading of the hospital service. For the latter goal, improving the standard of care provided by black male orderlie s was crucial. Thus, within a year of its formation in 1921, its founder and first president, Dr H.T.H. Burt, had

46

Chamber of Mines Archive 1911.

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192

SH U L A MARK S

proposed, and the Chamber had accepted, a scheme for the training and certification ofAfrican hospital order lies.i ? At a time when the majorit y of medical men were pron e to blame the African orderlies for their "st upidity," Butt pointed out that unless and until systematic and uniform trainin g was provided they had no right to expect anything different. His intervention marked a new departure for the mine hospitals, and a not insignificant opportunity for African orderlies, some of whom had alread y been at work in the indu stry's service for twelve or fifteen years.48 By 1924 more than a hund red African orderl ies had taken the new training and some seventy-four had passed the Association's examinations and received certificates of competence.i? Over the next decade and a half, hundreds of African orderlies were trained to a level of competence on the mines, while these years also saw the introduction of first-aid instruction by the Red Cross on the mines. There can be little doubt but that it was through the training of these orderlies , ambulance men and first-aiders that Western biomedicine was disseminated and became more acceptable to hundreds of thousand s of rural people in southern Africa. Although the historian of the Min e Medi cal Officers ' Association, A.P. Cartwright, asserts that "one of the lasting achievements of the mine medical officers is the success they had in getting so me tens of thousands of illiterates to accept civilized medical practice," the orderlies prob ably played a far more significant role in esta blishing the hegemon y of biomedicine, both among the migrant miner s and in the countrysid e more generally. Indeed, it was the profic iency of mine orderli es that led some coun cillors in the Transkei to suggest the extension of nurs ing trainin g to men in 1942. As Councillor O. Mphomane put it, The nursing pro fession has become very important amongst the people and it would be more useful if Native males were trained. I have sen [sic] good service rendered by the mine boys who have return ed home with a knowled ge of first aid. I contend that if they were allowed to undergo full training as nurses it would be a very good thing because it is not good for a man to be treated by a female.t"

47

Transvaa l Mine Medic al Officers ' Assoc iation 1922: 3.

48

Tra nsvaal Mine Medical Officers' Association 1922: 4, 13.

49

Transvaal Mine Medical Officers' Assoc iation 1924 : I.

Cartwright, Doctors of the Mines, 3. For Mphornanc' s views, see 1942 UTT GC Debates attached to G ES 1798 159/29/30, cited above. For similar reflections more widely in colonial Africa and in India, see Megan Vaughan, " Health and Hegemony: Representations of Disease and the Creation of the Colonial Subject in Nyasaland," and David Arno ld, " Public Health and Public 50

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Male Nursing in South African Mines

By the 1930s many mine orderlies had considerable experience . Thus, in 1932 T.D. Oliphant, an orderly in the Modder B Hospital who was looking for work, had eight years' experience in theatre, medical and surgical work, and could speak Xhosa, Sesotho, English and Afrikaans, while a couple of years later Esau N. Naapo, who was then at the Pretoria General (Isolation) Hospital but was looking for work on the mines, was certificated and had six years' experience ." Moreover, as this last example suggests, there was movement between employment on the mines, in the mental and isolation hospitals , and in the army: all regarded as archetypal male spheres . After the Second World War, African men like Jacob Mashoko, who had trained as a male nurse in the army, were looking for work on the mines, while still others who had trained as an orderlies with the military were looking for further professional training as male nurses.52 By this stage, some African men were being trained as professional nurses on the mines, although it was only late in the following decade that the mines began to think seriously of doing so on any scale. Both the proposal to train black men as nurses and its ultimate failure were rooted in the crisis in white male nursing in the postwar years.

White male nursing Male nursing was never a popular option among colonial men, and there were constant complaints about the numbers and competence of white male nurses. The reasons were only partly ideological - or, at least, the ideology was partly shaped by and in tum reinforced the material condit ions of nursing as a profession for white men. Orenstein probably expressed the common view of mine nursing for white men when he wrote to a prospect ive nursing recruit at the beginning of 1934: If I may offer advice , I would urge you not to enter this profession , which is already overcrowded, the openings in which arc very few, and the ultimate prospects very indifferent, as the highest salary paid to a trained male nurse is not very attractive .53

In the interwar years, the supply of white male recruits for nursing in mine hosp itals seems to have been closely related to ups and downs in the economy. Immediately

Power: Medicine and Hegemony in Colonial India," in Contesting Colonial Hegemony: State and Society in Africa and India, ed. Dagmar Engels & Shula Marks (German Historical Institute & British Academic Press, 1994): 131-51 and 173-21 O. 51 Barlow-Rand Archive 1932; 1934b. 52 Barlow-Rand Archives 1946a1b. Cape Archives 1945. 53 Barlow-Rand Archive 1934a.

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SHULA MARKS

after the world wars, and during the recession of the early 1920s and the Great Depress ion, Rand Mines records contain large numbers of rejections to the inquiries from young white men, both within South Africa and without, who were anxious to find employment as male nurses. Despite these exceptions, hospitals in general and mine and mental hospitals in particular were, for the most part, chronically short of suitable male nurses. By the end of 1948, the Transvaal Mine Nurses' Association was bemoaning the "serious shortage of suitable recruits for mine native hospitals" because qualified men were "abandoning the profession in favour of more lucrative employment elsewhere.T" The Group Medical Officers also conceded that there was "a serious shortage of suitable recruits," which they attributed in part to the more attractive conditions in the rapidly expanding Provincial Hospitals and in Rhodesia, in part to the more obvious attractions of employment which did not require training , which offered more regular hours of work - and which was better paid.55 Aside from considerations of quantity, there was also a question mark over the quality of the male probationers. Thus, in 1930, the newly formed South African Medical Association seriously considered ending the training scheme for white male nurses on the mines, as the numbers presenting themselves for examination had gradually dwindled. Moreover, according to the Council, "The results have been disappointing and few, if any of the male nurse candidates, show a standard of education and training comparable with that of the female nurse." It recommended the simplification of the syllabus and a new designation for successful candidates such as "Native Hospital Attendant.P'' To this the TMMOA (Transvaal Mine Medical Officers' Association) was vigorously opposed, on the grounds that this would "necessarily lower the standard of treatment for the mine natives, and render the male nurse incapable of undertaking the skilled nursing which the mine hospitals required [. .. ] the standard required should be the same as for female nurses.,,57 Instead, it was decided to improve the training facilities available for white male mine nurses. Nevertheless, male nurses continued to do less well in examinations than female nurses virtually every year. Matters came to a head after the Second World War, when, in accordance with the 1944 Nursing Act, the newly-formed and largely female South African Nursing

56

Chamber of Mines Archive 1948. Chamber of Mines Archive 1949. Transvaal Mine Medical Officers' Association 1930.

57

Transvaal Mine Medical Officers ' Association 1930.

54 55

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Male Nursing in South African Mine s

195

Council took over the responsibil ity for examining and approving training hosp itals from the largely male South African Medical Council, which had, since the early 1930s, regulated the training of male nurses and granted recognition to those hospitals which complied with its regulations. In one of its first attempts to flex its professional muscles, the Nursing Council reviewed all nurses' training and took action to improve standards. In 1946 the mine hospitals were inspected by Charlotte Searle, then Directress of Nursing in the Transvaal, and C.A. Nothard, first President of the Nursing Council. They found the hospitals woefully wanting. Unless the "numerous deficiencies" its inspectors found in the mines' "training arrangements" were remedied, the Chamber was informed, the Council would be "compelled" to withdraw "its recognition of mine hospitals as training schools." 58 In addition to their belief that those in charge "lacked knowledge of teaching and nursing school administration, and could not relate the prescribed syllabus to the practical training of the student.T" the Inspectors found the following : Student nurses are treated as supervisors to the native orderlies. Very little basic nursing is done by the student and he acts as a supervisor without the foundat ion of training in the correct nursing technique.v"

Clearly what happened in the hospitals replicated the division of labour underground: white men - even if they were only students - gave the orders and black men did the work . Not only did the white male probationer never wash a patient , so that he was "deprived of the valuable experience in learning how to observe his patient 's symptoms and of handling the human being intimately"; he did not make beds, feed patients or give and remove bedpans either. Moreover, in what the industry was pleased to believe were "model hospitals" the Council 's Inspectors found sheets in only two institutions, and drawsheets in none. As a consequence, the Council "felt that the student is severely handicapped in his nursing knowledge when he moved from the mine hospital to other types of hospital" - which presumably did provide sheets for white ifnot for black patients/'! The ultimatum from the Nursing Council was a blow to the mining industry, which by the 1940s frequently boasted of having the finest hospitals in Africa.62 58

Chamber of Mines Archive 1954.

59 60

Charlotte Searle, The History ofthe Development ofNursing in South Africa , 308 . South African Nursing Council 1946.

61

South African Nursing Council 1946.

See, for example , Witwatersrand Mine Native Wages Commi ssion [Lansdowne Commis sion] 1943: 14; Native Laws Inquiry [Fagan Commission] 1947: 41. 62

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196

SI-IULA MARKS

Frantic consultations between the Chamber and the Nursing Council staved off closure for a further five years. In 1952 the Nursing Council withdrew its recognition of all but one of the twenty-five training hospitals on the mines, although it advised that if "certain conditions were fulfilled" they could apply to be reestablished.v' The consistently high failure of the white mine nurses remained a problem for which the mine doctors had their own explanations. On the one hand they believedas did many physicians, and not only on the mines - that the Nursing Council imposed unrealistically high and rigid standards in its pursuit of professionalismr'" on the other, they blamed the quality of the new recruits : The type of youth for training has not a high standard of intelligence and is often irresponsible in his outlook so that the wastage has been considerable.v'

It is possible that some of the recruits to mine nursing were less than able; by com-

parison with the other opportunities for young white men in the 1950s - a period of boom in the South African economy - mine nursing, and indeed male nursing of all kinds, offered poor pay and few prospects, as Orenstein pointed out. Yet this is not the whole explanation. When in 1949 the Executive ofSANC discussed the matter with the Gold Producers' Committee, they professed themselves happy with the

theoretical training provided, which suggests that the problem was not simply lack of intelligence . Many of the reports from the early 1940s argued, on the contrary, that "the main deficiency is on the practical side as students do not carry out procedures in the wards.,,66 As we have seen, in 1946 the Nursing Council inspectors had reported this as the major problem. Nevertheless, by 1950 the nursing authorities had come to the perhaps uniquely South African conclusion that the reason the students performed so inadequately was that they were examined in a "European hospital" but were trained in a "native hospital." It was therefore arranged to send student nurses from the mines to the Johannesburg General Hospital so that "European male nurses will be afforded an opportunity to gain practical experience in the nursing of European

63 Chamber of Mines Archive 1952. The exception was the training school on the Simmer and Jack mine. 64 Marks, Divided Sisterhood, 168-69. 65 Chamber of Mines Archive 1955a. 66 Chamber of Mines Archive 1952.

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197

patients in that hospital on one day per week for four weeks immediately prior to [...] the Final Examination.Y" This proved to be no solution . The mine nurses still failed their examinations. What the racial explanation had failed to recognize was that there was also a gender dimension to the problem. Important as race and the racial division of labour were, for white males the gender division of labour appeared as relevant. Thus, by 1954, the Sister Lecturer at the WNLA Hospital- where the Chamber had set up a shortlived centralized training scheme for male nurses - asked for the discontinuance of the arrangement whereby students, for a few days before their examination, were sent to Johannesburg Hospital for practical ward experience: reports from ward sisters on the student nurses had been negative: some of the mine male nurses are unwilling to carry out such bedside nursing procedures as the removal and emptying of bedpans. I have come to the conclusion that this arrangement is not achieving the purpose for which it was planned and think it should be discontinued, especially if the Nursing Council will agree to examining mine candidates in their own hospitals.s''

The changing composition of mine nursing care The mines now turned to other sources of qualified staff. They proposed a three-year training scheme for training black male mine nurses "to a standard sufficiently high for mine Native hospitals" and set out proposals for raising the minimum wages of white male nurses in order to attract trained men from the provincial services.P'' In the event, the nurses' wages were not raised. The Chamber's Technical Advisory Committee advised the medical officers that "the present time was inopportune" to review the minimum rates of pay for white male nurses because the industry was already facing a wage demand from the mining unions - and they feared that any change in the nurses' pay would lead to a general increase in wages. While the Committee was "sympathetic" to the notion of training "well-educated" black male nurses, here too the suggested wages - a starting-rate of £9.0.0, rising to a maximum of £20 - was rejected in favour of a starting-rate of £6.0.0, rising to a maximum of £15. As this was very considerably lower than the salary scales of the handful of African male nurses who were now being employed in the Cape and Natal provin67

Chamber of Mines Archive 1950.

68

Chamber of Mines Archive 1955b.

69

Chamber of Mines Archive 1955b.

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cial hospital services, African men with the requisite education (Standard 8) to become State Registered Nurses were not attracted to the mines. By the middle of 1956, only one gold mine had begun training African male nurses.?" A combination of the uncompetitive wages for educated Africans, the continued reservations of the Nursing Council and the lack of enthus iasm on the part of the mining companie s meant that relatively few African men trained as registered nurses : orderlies drawn from among the mine recruits remained the main nursing cadre on the mines, although their training was improved and refined. Many were extraordinarily skilled. Dr Oluf Martiny, the retired Superintendent of the WNLA hospital, who had worked there for thirty-six years, talked movingly in an interview of their amazingly gentle and dedicated service, many of them capable of nursing demanding tetanus cases with skill and devotion. Interviews with retired and older mine orderlies suggest a cadre of men in tune with their patients, aware of their fears and social concerns, and with a real pride in their skills." Paradoxically, however, the concern of the Nursing Council for professionalization and the growth of black female nursing has today largely though not entirely displaced the skilled black orderlies. They had neither the education nor the class background to provide a model for the sons of professional nurses. In the I960s, as the provincial services began to train more nurses, they supplied the mines with their qualified, largely white, personnel. By the 1960s and I970 s, however, the shortage of white nurses, both male and female, became increasingly serious. And - as in the

70 Chamber of Mines 1955b/c. Also gleaned from an extract from Minutes of a Meeting of SubCommittee of Group Medical Officers, 30 July 1956, circular no 14/56, "Student Male Nurses Training Scheme." 71 I was fortunate in being able to interview Dr Martiny and a number of orderlies, many of them through his good offices, in September and December 1995 and again in April 1996. The interviews were held at the Rand Mutual Hospital and at the University of the Witwatersrand. I am especially grateful for the insights of Eric Maseti, Dr Martiny' s chief assistant, adviser and collaborator; Absalom H. Malikha, who first came to the mines from Malawi in 1946, and had recently retired from the WN LA hospital; and Ishmael Mapanya, who had trained as a nursing auxiliary and assistant physiotherapist and had been Chairman of the Nursing Orderlies of the South African Nursing Association. The Mozambican orderlies I interviewed were reluctant to be named. I have therefore tumed the interviews into a composite for the purposes of this text. I was also able to interview Benzani Sithole, a qualified male sister, and Bennet Gubula, an assistant radiographer, at the Durban Roodepoort Deep Hospital, on 5 December 1995, thanks to Dr B. MCauley. I am also indebted to Dr MCauley for sharing his experiences with me and allowing me free access to the DRD hospital records. On 19 April 1996 in Inhamisse, I was, thanks to Dr Luis Covane, able to interview Mr Mtlhola Joshua Macamo, who had been an ambulance man in the 1920s.

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general hospitals , so on the mines - a growing number of the qualified nurses were black women. Whatever the earlier reservations about employing women on the mines, this had dissipated in the face of necessity. How did the male orderlies feel about all this ? In 1995 I was fortunate enough to interview a number of black mine orderlies and male nurses . On several occasions, the men referred to being "lucky" in getting jobs as orderlies - they had higher status, better conditions, less dangerous work and more pay than underground workers . To become an orderly, a migrant had to approach an induna to get a job in the hospital, perhaps as a cleaner, and then prove himself trustworthy. A few were directly chosen by the medical officers because of their manifest talent in the firstaid classes given to all miners, but generally an individual could not approach the matron or superintendent directly but had to work his way into the job. It obviously helped ifhe had a relative already working in the hospital: ethnic and kinship links were important in gaining access to what was clearly a much sought-after job. One man who was now a male sister on the mines entered the profession from the prison service, which, in the 1970s, gave men incentives to improve their school qualifications and train as nurses . As the only male among 177 female trainees , he described himself as a "thorn among the roses." Yet he had no problems entering a female profession, for, as he remarked twice, "they were offering gold ," even if his family did look somewhat askance at his occupation. In general, the men I interviewed showed pride in their physical prowess: in their strength and skill , for example, in being able to lift orthopaedic patients, which the female nurses had to call on them to do. Yet what may be happening, now that there are more female nurses in the wards , is that - as was the case in Macvicar 's day in Victoria Hospital - men are being ousted from ward work and are once more expected to do "men' s work," like lifting heavy loads or controlling "difficult" patients. "Why," I asked them, "do you think the white male nurses failed their examinations ?" "Oh," they said, "this was simple : it was because we did the work." "But how did you feel about this," I asked, "especially as they were paid so much more than you were?" "No, we were lucky," came the unexpected response . "We were able to learn from them how to do the real nursing." "And how do you feel about the women nurses who are now on the mines?" There was a slightly embarrassed silence. "Well ... in our culture a man does not like to be told by a woman to do this and this and this," one ventured . "But surely," I came back, "that is what the white men were doing?" "Oh no," they answered. "We were men nursing men." "At the

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time we were just respecting the white colour," said another. "But now the black sisters do the same thing - order the black men around."n In a 1996 article in the Journal of Gender Studies, Dallas Isaac s and Mari lyn Poo le arg ue that in nursing the nature of masculinity is challen ged. Yet they maintain that "there are a variety of mediati ng factors which streng then the links between gender, occ upatio n and a strong sense of the masculine self" This would certai nly seem to be the case in the context of the mine hos pital. Certain ly, for the male orderlies , there was noth ing incompatible abou t being "nurses" and doing the hands-on work of nurses , and having a strong sense of their own masculinity - shown in their resent ment at bein g ordered around by women, but not by white men. The white men seem to have had a different concept of their racia l and gendered identity. Intimate contact with black bodies was left to black male orderlies. But - as the episode in the Johannesburg hospi tal revea ls - they may have been as reluctant to do the intimate nursing labour on white bodies : this was seen as "women 's work." Masculinity in both cases, as Isaacs and Poole suggest, was not held to be "the possession or non possess ion of certain traits" but had "to do with the mainte nance of certain relation ship s betwee n men and women , and women and men" - and, indeed, in th is case, between men and men. In both South Africa and Britain, masculinity contributed to patriarchal relationships, but its content differed in each case . In the mine hospital , masculinity was also mediated through class. The male orderlies had little difficulty in identifying with and caring for their patients; for many white men, race was undoubtedly a factor in stigmatizing nursing on the mines, but the problematical nature of their nursing seems to have reflected a different attitude to caring in general. Yet in South Africa we cannot assume that highly professionalized black female nurses are seen as possessing the idealized "feminine virt ues" either. Drawn from the educated Christian middle class, they often have an unenviable reputation for "blaming the victim" for his or her illness. Their trainin g and the appalling conditions which often confront them in the country's overcrowded hospitals - may serve to distance them from their community and their patients . Themselves part of the migrant work force and trained on the jo b, black male orderl ies in some ways provide an alternative model for a post -apart heid primary hea lth-care nursi ng service . Precisely because they lack professional credentials, however, and precise ly because white male nurses cannot prov ide a role model 72 For the centrality, complexity and ambiguity of the notion of 'respect' (for which the Xhosa word used on the mines was hlonipha ), see Breckenridge, "The Allure of Violence," 670-71 , 687. For the attitude of black men to " female dominance," see Mashaba, Rising to the Challenge, 72.

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in the way that the white nurses trained on the Nightingale model coul d for the upwardly mobile daughters of the black bourgeoisie, by and large the sons of the country's most successful female nurses are not nurses .

WORKS CITED Arnold , David . "Public Health and Public Power: Medicine and Hegemon y in Colonial India," in Engels & Marks , ed. Contesting Colonial Hegemony , 173-210. Baker, Julie . The Silent Crisis: Black Labour, Disease and the Economics and Politics ofHealth on

the So uth African Gold Mines, 1902-30 (Ottawa: National Library of Canada, 1989). Breckenridge, Keith . "The Allure of Violence : Men, Race and Masculinity on the South African Goldm ines, 1900-1950," Journal of Southern African Studies 24.4 (1998 ; special issue on "Masculinities in Southern Africa " edited by Robert Morrell) : 669-94. Burns, Catherine. '" A man is a clumsy thing who does not know how to handle a sick person ' : Aspects of the History of Masculinit y and Race in the Shaping of Male Nursing in South Africa," Journal ofSouthern African Studies 24.4 (1998 ; special issue on "Masculinities in Southern Africa " edited by Robert Morrell) : 695-718. Cartwright, Alan Patrick . Doctors of the Mines: A Commem orative Volume to Mark the 50th Ann-

iversary ofthe Mine Medical Officers 'Association ofSouth Africa (Cape Town: Purne ll, 1971). Dclphy, Christine. " Mother' s Union ?," Trouble and Strife 24 (Summe r 1992): 12-19. Engels, Dagmar, & Shula Marks, cd. Contesting Colonial Hegemony: State and Society in Afric a

and India (London : British Academic Press, 1994). Health Systems Trust. Update 11 (October 1995). Isaacs, Dallas, & Marilyn Poole . "Being a Man and Becoming a Nurse: Three Men's Stories,"

Journal ofGender Studies 5.1 (1996) : 39--48. Katz, Elaine . The White Death: Silicosis on the Witwatersrand Gold Mines, 1886-1910 (Johanne sburg: Witwater srand UP, 1994). Mark s, Shula . Divided Sisterhood: Race, Class and Gender in the South African Nursing Profes-

sion (Bas ingstoke : Macmillan; New York: St Martin's , 1994). Mashab a, Grace . Rising to the Challenge of Change: A History of Black Nursing in South Africa (Kenwyn: Juta, 1995). Moodie , T. Dunbar, with Vivienne Ndatshe. Going fo r Gold: Men, Mines and Migrat ion (Johannesburg : Witwatersrand UP, 1994). Packard, Randall. White Plague, Black Labour: Tuberculosis and the Political Economy of Health

and Disease in South Afri ca (Pieterrnaritzb urg: U of Natal P; London : James Curre y, 1990). Rosner, David , & Gerald Markowit z. Dying for Work: Workers ' Safety and Health in 20th Century

America (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987).

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Scott, Joan W. "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," American Historical Review 9 1.5 (December 1986): 1053-75. Sear le, Charlotte. The History

0/

the Development

0/ Nursing in South Afr ica,

1652-1960 (Cape

Town : C. Struik, 1965).

-

- . Towards Excellence: The Centenary ofState Registration / or Nurses and Midwives in South Afri ca, /891-1991 (Durban: Butterworths, 1991).

Simon, Janine. "Nursing veteran tells the story of her profession," The Star ( 17 Apri l 1996). Soothill, Keith, Chris tine Henry & Kevin Kendrick, ed. Themes and Perspectives in Nursing (London : Cha pman & Hall, 1992). Vaughan, Megan . "Health and Hegemony: Representations of Disease and the Creation of the Colonial Subject in Nyasaland," in Engels & Marks, cd. Contesting Colonial Hegemony, 131- 51. Wallace , C laire. " Danger: Ma le Nurses," Nursing Mirror 130 (1970) , Part 20: 20.

Primary sources B AR L O W-RA ND AR CHIV E

1917. BRA Box 165 File 424F, Medica l Officer 's Reports, Manager East Rand Proprietary Mine to Sec. Rand Mines (30 July). 1919a. BRA Box 817 file 788 volA SNH 1915 - answer to questionnaire (9 May). 1919b. Circ. 116/ 19 (2 October). 1919c. Memo to Sec. City Deep and Modder B, from Orenstein ( 10 July). 1921. BRA Box 817 File 788ky - memo from Orenstein to EG Izod and HA Read ( 19 March). 1931. BRA Box 817 788y (February). 1932. BRA: Box 817 788y, Individuals vol 4 5-NH, Wilson to J.McC Drumm ond Sec. TMMOA (8 June ). 1934a . BRA Box 817 788y, 0 to Neill Lennard Durban ( 19 January). 1934b. BRA Box 817 788y, Wilson to Mine Medical Officers (28 March). 1934c. BRA Box 817 788y, Orenstein to Senior MOs and Matrons ( 10 Ap ril). 1938. BRA: Box 817 788y, volA S-NH: Rates of Pay ofNative Hospital Emp loyees (8 Decembe r). 1942. BRA Box 817 788y, File 4 SNH. Dr H.F.Q. Thompson to the Sec. Rand Mines (13 January). I946a. BRA Box 817 788y, Wilson to MOS (27 June). I946b . BRA Box 817 788y, volA, SNH 1915 - Wilson for CMO to J.M . (12 July). CAPE AR CH IV ES

1892. Co lonial Office, CO 1524, King WiIIiam 's Town Hospital. 1945. Public Hospitals Archive P.A.H, Provo Sec. to Director-Genl Am1Y Medical Services (29 May).

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CH AMBER O F MI NES AR CHIVE 1950. CMA reel 1891, frame 0248, "Lack of facilities for training in mine hospitals ," Sub-Cttee GMO to Chamber (7 July). 1954. CMA reel 1775, frame 79. Sr S. Towert, Sister Lecturer, WNLA Hospital , to Sec. C of M (3 February) . 1911. CMA 2310/154 : Handwritten summary of replies of Mine Doctors to Chamber's circular on hospital s (April) . 1916. CMA Reel 2415, ff. 1990 - attendance registers of nurses attending training lectures. 1948. CMA , reel 2233, file 2312 ff. Sec. Tvl Mine Male Nurses Association to Sec. Gold Producers ' Cttee (7 December) . 1949. Meeting of Group Medical Officers (I February). 1952. CMA , Reel 1675, frame 299 : Registrar SANC to Sec. GPC (12 May). 1954. CMA Reel 1745, frame 0644ff Memo to President Gold Producers ' Committee from Group Medical Officer s (5 May). 1955a. CMA Reel 1745 0644 ff Memo for the Grp MOs Sub-Ctee , "The staffing of mine hospitals" (signed L.S. Williams and Frank Retief) (15 March) . 1955b. CMA reel 1745, frame 0644 ff Extract from minutes of meeting of Technical Advisory Cttee (II August) . 1955c. CMA reel 1745, frame 0644 ff Memorandum to the Manager C ofM (12 October) . 1955d. CMA reel 1745, frame 0644 II C of M, Note for the Record (9 Novemb er).

I 959a . CMA , Reel 1428, frame 1211ff, Letter to Genl Manager, Chamber of Mines from Organising Cttee : Proposed Tvl and OFS Mines African Nursing Orderly Association (7 April). 1959b. Circular no.26/5, minutes of meeting of Group Medical Officers (11 May). 1959c. Memo , Native Labour Organization to Genl Manager (26 May). 1959d. General Manager, C of M: Memo to the Assistant Technical Adviser (29 May). 1915. CMA Reel 2515 ff 1760 Tvl Chamber of Mines , Medical Officers' Committee, SubCommittee's Report re training of hospital male nurses (\5 October). D EPARTMENT O F N ATIVE AFFAIRS 1915. NTS 58 2447/15/£75: E. Dower, SNA to DNL (28 December) . 1915. NTS 58 2447/15/£75: E. Dower, SNA to DNL(28 December) . 1916a. NTS 58 2447/15 /£75: Acting DNLB to SNA (10 January) . 1916b. SNA, reporting the views of the Minister of Mines and Industries, ES . Malan (31 January) . 19l 6c. Under SNA to Director of Native Labour (DNL) , reporting the views of the Prime Minister, Louis Botha (16 February) . 1917. NTS 58 2447/15/£15: SNA, E. Dower, to Genl Manager, Crown Mines, conveying Botha's good wish es (3 May).

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GOVERNMENT NATIVE LABOUR BUREAU 1921a. GNLB 387, 33/28 (State Archives, Pretoria), "Alleged Grievances of Native Nurses at Crown Mines Hospital as represented to Director ofNative Labour" (22 August) . 1921b. Orenstein to H.S. Cooke, "Alleged grievances [...]" (29 August). 1922a. GNLB 387 33/28. Orenstein to Taberer, Native Recruiting Corporation (NRC) : re Crown Mines nurses (16 January). 1922b. GNLB 387, 33/28. "Native female nurses discipline," Inspec. and Protector, NAD Benoni, R. Welsh to Dir. NL (24 August). 1922c. Orenstein to Director of Native Labour (6 September). TRANSVAAL MIN E M EDICAL OFFICERS' ASSOCIATION 1922. "Proposed scheme for the training of male native hospital orderlies," Proceedings of the TMMOA 2.3 (July 1922). 1924. "President's Report," Proceedings ofthe TMMOA 3.12 (April 1924). 1930. "European Mine Hospital orderlies," Proceedings ofthe TMMOA 10.112 (July 1930). MISCE LLANEOUS Department of Public Health (Central Archives, Pretoria) 1949. UrrGC 1942, 1798 159/29/30, Councillor EU. Soga, cited in minutes of discussion (26 September). Department of Public Health 1946. GES 2811 p.23 South Afiican Nursing Council, General Report on Mine Hospital Training Schools for Male Nurses, Annexure EC29/46, by CA Nothard and C. Searle (2 September) . Native Laws Inquiry (Fagan Commission), 1947. Evid. of GPC to Native Laws Inquiry (Fagan Comm ission): 41. Statement number 9. Rhodes University, c.l937. Grahamstown, Pr 3085, Macvicar papers: Neil Macvicar, TSS "Memorandum on the training of native medical assistants," Rhodes University, Grahamstown . Witwatersrand Mine Native Wages Commission (Lansdowne Commission), 1943. Evid. Gold Producers' Committee ofTvl C ofM.

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Faithful Daughter, Murdering Mother Transgression and Social Control in Colonial Namibia' Meredith McKittrick with Fanuel Shingenge

I

1938 OR 1939, AN UN IN ITI AT E D AND UNWED G IRL named Nangombe living in the Uukwaluudhi district of Ovamboland, northern Namibia, became

N

pregnant. If mission and colonial accounts are to be believed , it was not an unusual occurrence at this time, but it had profound consequences for Nangombe

and those close to her. By the 1930s, the belief that pre-initiation pregnancies boded ill fortune for clan, chief and communit y was highly contested , but it was far from extinct. When the chief discovered the pregnancy, he expelled Nangombe . She took refuge in a neighbouring society and bore a daughter. While such infants were often killed at birth, Nangombe's was not. Mother and daughter returned home within the year. The chief, enraged by their re-appearance , then expelled the entire family. The problems created by Nangombe's child caused tension in her household, and the family was driven to begging for food. Nangombe's mother, seeing the catastrophes already caused by the presence of her illegitimate granddaughter and fearing that worse was to come, urged her daughter to kill the child. She refused, while her mother continued to offer dire predictions that their lineage wou ld be destroyed if the child were left alive. Finally, in July 1941, Nangombe gave in to the pressure from her mother, and strangled her daughter. Her father and the local chief reported her act to colonial officials. The South West African government investigated and sent her to trial with her mother, who was charged as an accessory to murder.

1 I am grateful to Pamela Scully, Thomas McClendon, Richard Roberts, Donald Moore, Jordan Sand and membe rs of the Georgetown History Department Seminar for commenting on earlier versions of this essay, and to the Fulbright II E programme and Georgetown University's Graduate School for funding the research for this project.

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The nature of the case changed abruptly in the colonial capital of Windhoek. Instead of trying Nangombe for murder, the Supreme Court convened to decide whether she was insane, despite testimony from her village asserting that she was sane and that the murder had been a rational act. Her mother was transformed from a co-defendant to a witness to her daughter's physical and mental health. Nangombe was diagnosed as epileptic and, on this basis, committed to a native asylum in Fort Beaufort, South Africa. She remained there until 1946, when she was released and returned home. She lived out the rest of her life in relative anonymity, little noticed in the communities where she lived and invisible to the colonial administration - a far cry from the scrutiny and public interventions attending her young adulthood? Most murder cases in this part of Namibia were settled within native tribunals which left no written record. Yet, while exceptional in the documentation produced around her, Nangombe was no historical anomaly. The establishment of Christian communities and the arrival of colonial officials in Ovambo societies created significant conflicts along the faultlines of gender and generation. These conflicts peaked in the 1930s and 1940s, and ultimately wrought significant transformations in Ovambo society. The weapons in such battles were the goods and ideas that came with Christianity and colonialism - literacy, cloth, and church rituals, to name a few. Some young men and women abandoned their families and went to live with missionaries, who gave them new clothes and new names. On a much larger scale, children sneaked away to church and learned to read while their parents thought they were doing chores; they played with baptized friends who taunted them for being "pagans" and living in darkness. Among the girls and boys of Nangombe 's generation, such peer pressure campaigns, encouraged to some degree by missionaries, were everywhere.' Young people blended old and new in ways that threatened the dominance of their elders, traditional rulers, colonials and missionaries alike. These various selfappointed guardians of gendered and generational hierarchies saw identities as properly Christian or pagan, modem or traditional, claiming the power to define these 2 Documentation in this case is contained in Windhoek, Namibia, in the National Archives of Namibia (NAN), Supreme Court of Windhoek (SCW) 1/1/107, criminal cases 1941, no. 34, and Native Affairs Ovamboland (NAO) 46 f 45/1/16. There are no surviving records for Nangombe at Fort Beaufort, now renamed Tower Hospital. All interviews in reference to this case were conducted by the author and Fanuel Shingenge unless otherwise specified. All surnames of those involved directly in the case have been omitted to protect their privacy. 3 These changes are examined in detail in Meredith McKittrick, "Conflict and Social Change in Northern Namibia, 1850--1950" (doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, 1995), esp. ch. 4 and 5.

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categories as theirs alone. Part of the disobedience of youth lay in a refusal to remain within fixed boundaries . Young women's transgressions appeared particularly egregious to their superiors because their behaviour was measured much more narrowly in terms of their conformity to a system of reproductive controls. Thus traditional leaders insisted on female initiation while church leaders strictly forbade it; young women's attempts to navigate these extremes were inevitably fraught with conflict. Thus the battles over a child's fate could reveal a great deal about the social, political and cultural terrain ofOvambo societies at this time. But the progression of this case from an African village to the distant colonial capital reveals a larger arena of contestation and difference: the varieties of colonialism which could exist within one colony" There is a tension implicit in viewing colonialism as confused, pluralistic, even shallow - and yet as having a profound impact." As John Comaroff has argued, "There is a sense in which, for [the colonized], the niceties of competing colonialisms are beside the point.'" African social history has tended to stress the space for resistance and negotiation created by colonial contradictions, focusing on colonial and 'customary' law, migrant labour and cash-cropping as sites where social relations were contested and redefined. While these forms of resistance often resulted in long-term disadvantages for women, they are considered important because they reveal African agency.' Indeed, Nangombe ultimately did playa small 4 Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. Frederick Cooper & Ann Laura Stoler (Berkeley: U of California P, 1998); also Namibia under South African Rule: Mobility and Containment, 1915-46, ed. Patricia Hayes, Jeremy Silvester, Marion Wallace & Wolfram Hartmann (London : James Currey, 1998); Colonialism and Culture, ed. Nicholas Dirks (Ann Arbor : U of Michigan P, 1992), Frederick Cooper 6 Ann Laura Stoler, "Introduction: Tensions of Empire : Colonial Control and Visions of Rule," American Ethnologist 16 (1989): 609-21 ; Nicholas Thomas, "Colonial Conversions : Difference, Hierarchy and History in Early Twentieth-Century Evangelical Propaganda," Comparative Studies in Society and History 34 (1992): 366-89; Ann Laura Stoler, "Rethinking Colonial Categories : European Communities and the Boundaries of Rule," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 31 (1989) : 134-61 ; John Comaroff, "Images of Empire, Contests of Conscience: Models of Colonial Domination in South Africa," American Ethnologist 16 (1989) : 661-85. s Stoler & Cooper , " Introduction," 620-21 , and Stoler & Cooper, Tensions of Empire, 21-22, have argued that colonial confusion limited colonialism's ability to reshape the globe; Dirks, Colonialism and Culture, 7, emphasizes that the contradictions of colonialism did not mean that its power was fragile. 6 Comaroff, "Images of Empire," 681.

7 A sampling of this rich literature includes: Elizabeth Schmidt , Peasants, Traders and Wives (Portsmouth NH : Heinemann, 1992); Belinda Bozzoli with Mmantho Nkotsoe , Women of Phokeng: Consciousness, Life Strategy and Migrancy in South Africa, 1900-1983 (Portsmouth

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part in reshaping Ovambo conceptions of pre-initiation pregnancies and all that they represented . Yet the competin g coloni alisms which surrounded her must have seemed terrifying and arbitrary rather than potentially liberating; for her, doubtl ess, the niceties of competition among them were indeed beside the point. The confus ion of colonial messages did not ultimately give her more room to manoeuvre. Instead, the reverse happened - as she tried to navigate her way among the categorie s created by colonialism's diverse agents, she found no refuge in the contradictions.

A disobedient daughter Ovamboland, Nangombe's home for the first two decades of her life, is located in north-central Namibia, ends at the Angolan border, and consists of seven formerly independent pol ities of var ious sizes. On the eve of colonialism these societies , as well as several across the border, shared certain features. All were matrilinea l and patrilocal, and in each a woman's sanctioned reproduct ive career began with initiation. The line between illegitimate and legitimate pregnancies was marked by the ceremon y, which involved elaborate tests to prove the initiates were not pregnant and rituals to enhance their fertility. Once initiated, young women could engage in sexual intercourse; if they became pregnant, they quickly married. Parents who lacked cattle for initiation or wedding feasts or needed the labour of a grown daughter therefore retained control of young women by delaying initiation. During subsistence crises in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women were often not initiated until their twenties or early thirties. This pattern continued into the colonial period."

NH: Heinemann , 1991); Martin Chanock, "Making Customary law: Men, Women and Colonial Courts in Colonial Northern Rhodesia," in Afric an Women and the Law: Historical Perspectives, ed. Margaret Jean Hay & Marcia Wright (Boston MA: Boston University African Studies Center, 1982); Law in Colonial Africa, ed. Kristin Mann & Richard Roberts (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann , 1991); Kristin Mann, Marrying Well: Marriage. Status and Social Change among the Educated Elite in Colonial Lagos (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985); and Thomas McClendon, 'Tradition and Domestic Struggle in the Courtroom: Customary Law and the Control of Women in Segregation-Era Natal," International Journal ofAfrican Historical Studies 28 (1995): 527-61. 8 Edwin Loeb, In Feudal Africa (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1962): 237; Charles Mallory, "So me Aspects of the Mission Policy and Practice of the Church of the Province of South Africa in Ovamboland" (MA thesis, Rhodes University, 1971): 129. Also Rusia Elago, interviewed September 1993 in Ongandjera; Maria Shikalepo and Henok Shikwambi, interviewed November 1993 in Ongandjera; Priskila Angombe , interviewed July 1993, in Ombalantu; Aune Negongo, interviewed by Fanuel Shingenge July 1996 in Ongandjera.

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In theory, the threat of earthly and supernatural sanctions controlled the sexual behavior of uninitiated women. In Ovambo kingdoms, pre-initiation pregnancy was believed to threaten the life of the king and the girl's lineage. Oral traditions state that pregnant, uninitiated girls were burned alive in the distant past," By the late nineteenth century, girls who became pregnant before initiation were barred from the ceremony and given the obscene label omusimbakadhona, or 'pregnant girl,' in Nangombe's part of Ovamboland; to the east, they were called ehengu. In many kingdoms they were expelled; usually their pregnancies were aborted or their children killed upon birth . They also faced greatly reduced marriage prospects. The label 'pregnant girl' outlasted physical pregnancy and was a stigma that remained with them for life. Yet the fact that, as early as the tum of the century, mothers routinely placed jars of their daughters' menstrual blood in the rafters of their sleeping huts in the belief that it would prevent pregnancy indicates that the threat of extreme sanctions did not ensure girls' abstinence, nor did their elders believe it did. to Instead, beginning at least in the early twentieth century, parents, pastors, chiefs , headmen and colonial officials argued that young women were becoming increasingly licentious. Particularly in the 1930s and 1940s, they asserted that illegitimate pregnancies were rising, that young women frequently formed sexual relationships with men, and that girls no longer had any respect for their elders . Whether or not such activities were in fact becoming more common - and there is no way to measure this today - the reports indicate quite clearly that such transgressions were occurring. The blame for these transgressions and their consequences was placed squarely on the shoulders of young women. Local ideas about pre-initiation pregnancy contain a powerful presumption about the possibility of female agency and autonomy during a time when initiation and marriage practices were in flux. While boys who impregnated girls had their heads shaved as a sign of shame, it was girls who were punished most severely, "because they were the ones who let boys do what was 9 Albertina Amwaama, interviewed June 1996 in Ongandjera; Johannes Kalenga, interviewed September 1993 in Ongandjera; Isak Nangolo and Emma Kelimwe, interviewed August 1993 in Ongandjera; Antanasius Penda, interviewed July 1993 in Ombalantu; Martha Shooya and Erastus Shikalepo, interviewed August 1993 in Ombalantu; Selma Amutana, interviewed July 1997 in Ondonga. Cf Martin Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985), for similar cases of traditions which portray the past as a golden age of order and harmony enforced by severe penalties. 10 Helsinki University Library, Helsinki, Finland, Emil Liljeblad Collection, microfiche eard 22, testimony of Rachel Hamutumua.

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punishable."!' The possibility that girls could be forced into sex was seen as remote: "Parents believed that a forced girl must scream [... ] Remaining silent is an indication of agreement and willingness.t'P Thus uninitiated girls who engaged in sexual activity were seen as conscious agents who bore full responsibility for their actions and who recklessly endangered others. Local characterizations of such girls paint them as disobedient and defiant. In this sense, they were ironically the consummate historical agent, granted the ability to shape their future identity and fate, as well as the community's fate - but this power carried a heavy price. Even in the context of a mission and colonial presence, this institution of female initiation and beliefs about 'pregnant girls' shaped Nangombe's adolescence. She was at least seventeen when she became pregnant. As the eldest daughter, her labour was probably valued highly at home, and she might have expected a long wait for initiation. Her relationship with the man who fathered her child was no casual encounter; her family indicated that she meant to marry him after her initiation. She stayed with his relatives after she was expelled, and he named her child. When she became pregnant, her brother says, her family regarded it as "her fault" for freely choosing to engage in sexual relations before society sanctioned her activities. 13 Although many Ovambo chiefs were allowing pregnant girls to return with their children by the 1930s, the Uukwaluudhi chief was famed for his rigid stance on preinitiation pregnancies within his kingdom. 14 Thus it must have been no surprise to Nangombe that she was "chased" from the kingdom. Like many girls before and after her, she took refuge in the neighbouring society ofUukolonkadhi, where pregnant girls traditionally were not expelled. According to her surviving relatives, Nangombe did not get along with her hosts there. 15 'Pregnant girls' were apparently not treated well even in places where expulsion was not practised; an uninitiated woman who gave birth in Uukolonkadhi in 1940 was forced to do so outside, in the bush, in the middle of winter. The child died of exposure a few days later.16 11 Aune Negongo, interviewed by Fanuel Shingenge August 1996 in Ongandjera; also Oiva Shivute, interviewed June 1996 in Ongandjera. 12

Aune Negongo, interviewed August 1996.

Brother and sister-in-law of Nangombe, interviewed by Fanuel Shingengc, August 1996 in Ongandjera. 13

14 Maria Nehambo Ngoloimwe, interviewed August 1993 in Ombalantu; Eliaser Kaanandunge and Selma Pelema, interviewed August 1993 in Ongandjera; Oiva Shivute , interviewed August 1993 in Ongandjera.

15

Brother of Nangombe, interviewed August 1996.

16

NAN , NAO 46 f 45/1/10,22 January 1941, testimony relating to death of infant.

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And so it is possible that Nangombe was treated cruelly by her boyfriend 's relatives; it is equally possible, as her brother and a member of her natal village implied in interviews, that she was a difficult and rebellious adolescent who cared little for the rules of society or the consequences of her actions .l? In any case, she defied community expectations a second time : she chose to return to her home, where her reception was by no means certain.

A controversial child Nangombe's view of her child contradicted that of the Uukwaluudhi chief, her mother, and other like-minded Ovambo . Seventy years before, there perhaps would have been no way of understanding her child's existence except as a cursed presence which would bring bad luck. But ideas about illegitimate children were under attack by Ovamboland's Christian community, which was influential and growing. The arrival of missionaries in 1870 marked the beginning of serious challenges to indigenous ideas about pre-initiation pregnancy. By 1940, about half the region 's population was at least nominally Christian, and young people of both sexes made up the majority of converts. 18 The potential for major rifts within families was occasionally realized in the form of forced initiations, which peaked among girls of Nangombe's generation.!" Missionaries welcomed uninitiated pregnant girls whom non-Christian Ovambo looked upon with horror, and many such girls fled to mission stations .i" Converts ' 17 One person in her natal village thought that Nangombe had been re-expelled because she was pregnant again - a story which is not true, but which underscores the perception that she had learned nothing from her first experience; Omagano Abraham, interviewed June 1996 in Uukwaluudhi. 18 McKittrick , Conjlict and Social Change, ch. 4 and 5. 19 Examples of forced initiations are described in NAN , NAO 12 f 6/2/1, Victor Alho to Native Commissioner for Ovamboland (NCO), 28 November 1944 and 23 January 1945; also Chief Native Commissioner (CNC) to Gotthardt, 2 October 1945 and NCO to CNC, 15 October. 1945. Elia Haipinge, interviewed August 1993 in Ongandjera, said forced initiation was a perpetual problem when he became minister of the Ongandjera church in the 1940s; Selma Amutana, interviewed July 1997 in Ondonga, said that from their first arrival in the kingdom in 1870, missionaries were a magnet for girls who wished to avoid initiation. Emmanuel Kreike details example s of forced initiation in the eastern kingdom of Uukwanyama as well; "Recreating Eden: Agro-Ecological Change, Food Security and Environmental Diversity in Southern Angola and Northern Namibia, 1890-1960" (doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 1996). 20 Viktor Lebzelter, Rassen und Kulturen in Sudafrika : Wissenschafiliche Ergebnisse einer Forschungsreise nach Sud- und Sudwestafrika in den Jahren 1926-1928, vol. 2: Eingeborenen-

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rejection of initiation, and the presence of the children of pregnant girls at mission stations, challenged beliefs about the dangers of pre-initiation pregnancies. Yet missionaries, exerting their own very powerful control over female fertility and reproduction, expected pregnant girls and other converts, once within the fold , to confess and reform their immoral ways. Illegitimacy was defined in terms of marriage rather than initiation; not unlike 'pagan ' Ovarnbo, missionaries threatened unmarried pregnant converts with expulsion - from the church rather than the kingdom." It is likely that there had long been some local resistance to the elimination of

illegitimate children and that it was this undercurrent of resistance which drew many ' pregnant girls' to mission stat ions where their children were nurtured rather than condemned, without apparent ill consequence. Through her initial refusal to kill her daughter, Nangombe was part of this wider challenge to the meaning of illegitimacy. Mea suring the extent to which mission ideologies informed her actions is impossible, since we lack her view s on the subject. But Nangombe spent her life near miss ion stations and lived among Christian children who frequentl y taught their non-Christian playmate s church doctrine.V Her brother joined the church shortl y after she was tried. It is unlikel y that Nangombe was unaware of Christian ideas about the children of pregnant girls . Amid widening dis agreement over the con sequences of pre-initiation pregnancie s, old community cont rols were slowly replaced with newer, more tenuous ones. There were oth er 'pregnant girls' returning home from exi le with live children at this time. Some encountered the wrath of older relatives and had to flee to mission stations to save their children 's lives. 23 But others managed to integrate quietl y, albeit with lasting stigma , into societies where many people were becoming less concerned with pre-initiation pregnancies. Their children survived but were stigmatized : an Ovambo saying goes, "To be the child of a pregnant girl is to be like a crow with a white spot " - to have an emblem that will mark you your whole life. One

kulturen (Leipzig: Hiersemann , 1934), quoted in Loeb, In Feudal Afr ica, 285; Albertina Amwaama, interviewed June 1996 in Ongandjera; Aune Negongo, interviewed August 1996. 21 Aune Nego ngo, interviewed August 1993 in Ongandjera; Tomas Uushini, Isak Nangolo and Emma Kelimwe, interviewed August 1993 in Ongandjera. 22 Omagano Abraham, interviewed June 1996; Modestu s Andowa, interviewed August 1993 in Ornbalantu; Rita Aipumbu, interviewed August 1993 in Ombalantu; Simeon Heita interviewed July 1993 in Ombalantu. 23 One such story was narrated by Aune Negongo, interviewed August 1996.

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informant stated, "Even the next generation would be known as the grandchildren of a pregnant girl."24 This was therefore a time of flux, and many chiefs were inconsistent in their views. The chief who accepted Nangombe's family into exile had, just two years before, expelled a pregnant girl and her family, but had been forced by the colonial government to let them return. Nor was the colonial government consistent. In most cases it turned a blind eye to cases of expulsion and forced initiation. While it occasionally prosecuted abortion cases vigorously, it never pursued infanticide cases with the same zeal. In 1941, the year in which Nangombe killed her child, the native commissioner asserted that infanticide was virtually unknown in Ovamboland. Yet in 1947 the native commissioner gave a rare accounting ofknown infanticides: from April to September, he listed twelve, none of which was officially investigated" Perhaps Nangombe, aware of the changes afoot, decided to take her chances . But, upon her return from exile, she again faced the chief's wrath, this time with her whole family. When asked in 1996 if it was common for a family to be expelled for one girl's crimes, Nangornbe's brother made it clear that this, too, was seen as Nangornbe's responsibility and hinted at the sensation that her return created : Listen: this is how it happened. Nangombe was chased out of Uukwaluudhi. The family was left in peace. [. .. ] She decided to return home to Uukwaluudhi [with her child]. Everybody was shocked to see a child of omusimbakadhona [a 'pregnant girl'] in Uukwaluudhi. It was a big mistake. Bad luck was among us. Mweegameni , who was the king's messenger and our relative, was told by the king to deliver the message to us, ordering our household to pack and leave. So we left Uukwaluudhi for [the neighbouring kingdom of] Ongandjera.26

Once in Ongandjera, Nangombe's father divided the family - two wives and their children - among various relatives in order to ensure that they were fed. Nangornbe was in a grim situation - exiled with her family from their home, branded a 'pregnant girl' by the community, responsible for the breakup of her family, quarrelling with her mother, facing severely reduced marriage prospects due to her reputation, and raising a child who at least some people believed should not live. Negongo, interviewed August 1996. NAN, NAO 60 f 12/1, April-September 1947 report, 9. One month later, officials sent an infanticide case to the headman's council for trial in the eastern community of Uukwanyama, with an order to root out the practice once and for all (NAN, NAO 90 f 36/1,24 October 1947, Assistant Native Commissioner - Oshikango to NCO). 26 Nangombes brother, interviewed August 1996. 24

25

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Her mother argued that the child was oshipwe (taboo, bringing ill fortune) and needed to be killed; when questioned later by a European investigator, she said, "I told her to kill the child because I was afraid of the child and that the child would bring death to our clan .,,27 In the face of what must have seemed like evidence supporting her mother's dire predictions, Nangombe challenged traditional expectations yet again by attempting to redefine the significance of her daughter. Nangombe's child had a name, Nimungu, and an existence; Nangombe referred to her as "my child" in her testimony and made it plain that she had been unwilling to kill her. Her mother reported that Nangombe had always treated the child well and had been a good mother" In her testimony, Nangombe gave markedly different reasons from her mother for finally wishing her child dead: "I killed my child because I had nothing to give her to eat, and my mother kept quarrelling with me about the child . She would not allow my child to eat with her children because she said her children would die.,,29 By the time she acquiesced to her mother's demands , the child was about two years old. Nangombe could have run to a mission station, as other pregnant girls did, and saved her daughter's life. But such a drastic act often meant severing kinship ties. Nangombe's sister-in-law, a Christian woman who knew Nangombe well, said, "She longed for a good relationship between her and her family. Nangombe killed her child because her mother 's demands were getting harsher each day. She wanted to be a faithful daughter.v'? Nangombe had risked her future by engaging in sexual activity before initiation and put her family at risk by returning home with her child, but she did not take the final step of breaking off all ties to her family by fleeing to the missionaries. There were limits to her disobedience, and ultimately she chose to make peace with her mother. This demonstrate s the power that bonds of kinship and community could hold, even under tremendous strain . And yet Nangombe's act was no simple solution to her problem. Rather, her attempt to re-integrate herself into the community faced an insurmountable obstacle: because the community was divided in its view of pre-initiation pregnancies, it would inevitably be divided over the fate of any resulting children . To many, Nangombe 's child was never fully 'alive,' for some had her marked for death from the 27 NA N, NAO 46, f 45/1/6, Greyling diary, 7 August 1941, statement from Nakwira, Nangombe's mother.

28 29

30

NAN , SCW 1/1/107, criminal cases 1941, case 34, 6. NAN , NAO 46 f 45/1/6, Greyling diary, 7 August 1941. Nangombe 's sister-in-law, interviewed by Fanuel Shingenge, August 1996, in Ongandjera .

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time she had been conceived. As in Europe, the practice of infanticide related directly to the circumstances of a child's birth. Yet the distinction between 'i nfanticide ' and ' murder ' in many European societies , while historicall y contested , implies that people become more fully human as they mature from a newly born infant without experiences of the world to a person with a lived history.' ! In Ovambo society, ideas of personhood carried very different connotations. Infanticide was normally reserved for children born to uninitiated mothers and therefore ritually and physically dangerous to other humans ; a missionary noted in 1911: "It is said that children whose mothers have not undergone the [initiation] ceremony are not human beings , and they are therefore not entitled to live.'>32 One was born to be a full member of the society, or one was not ; to many, the danger posed by the children of pregnant girls, and the problem atical meanings underlying their existence, did not decrease as the child grew older. But with the possibility of actively contesting this view came the possibility of new kinds of ' infanticides' - murders of forbidden children past the age of infancy. Nangombe's brother remember s that much of the community was against what she had done, partly because she had delayed so long that the child was able to walk ; to some, it had become a person despite the ritual prohibitions/ :' This sort of delayed ' infanticide' was probabl y almost unknown prior to the arrival of missionarie s and colonial officials ; it was created "as much by the tensions produced by colonial rule as by cultural dictates. t''" Neither was it 'traditional' nor did it conform to the moral standards being preached by missionaries and (more rarely) colonial officials. It

31 Fear o f expulsion and illegitim acy drove women to commit infanti cide or to conceal births on the mission stations of the South African Cape in the 1840s; Pamela Scully, Liberating the Family? Gender and British Slave Emancipation in the Rural Western Cape, South Afr ica. 18231853 (Portsmouth NH : Heinemann, 1997). In Britain , infanticide was practised by unmarried working women who could not support their children. See Lionel Rose, The Massacre ofthe Innocents: Infanticide in Britain. 1800-1939 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986). In both contexts, and in colonial Namibia, murder of a child over the age of one, who recogni zes her parents

and has gained some cogni zance of the world around her, carried different impli cations and legal weight than the murder of a newb orn . Although colonial Namibian courts made no formal distinction between murder and infanticide, sentences tended to be far more lenient in infanticide cases. 32

Herm ann Tonje s, Ovamholand: Land. Leute, Mission (Berlin: Martin Warneck, 1911 ): 130.

33

Nangombe 's brother, interviewed August 1996.

Pam ela Scully, "Narratives of [infant icide in the Afterm ath of Slave Ema nci pation in the Ninetee nth-Ce ntury Ca pe Co lony, South Africa ," Canadian Jo urnal of African Studies 30 (1996): 9 1. 34

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therefore caused a stir in the community, challenging what would otherwise perhaps have been resigned acceptance among many. Nangombe's mother seems to have been aware of the ambiguity of the act. In her testimony, she denied telling Nangombe to kill the child until confronted directly by her daughter.P Nangombe's younger sisters today remember that their mother told them Nangomb e was insane and killed her child in a fit of madness; yet Nangombe's brother, who was in his twenties at the time, remembers quite clearly that the mother ordered the killing and says his sister was not insane. While Nangombe may have expected her action to draw a controversial response from a community whose opinions were divided, she could not have foreseen the larger result. The killing of an illegitimate child who was already old enough to walk was an event born of both indigenous cultural beliefs and colonial challenges to such beliefs. It provoked debate that the killing of illegitimate newborns did not - among not only Ovambo, but also colonial officials.

Troubling transgressions The South African colonial administration established in Ovamboland in 1915 had a minimal European staff and ruled primarily through African allies. Kings and headmen who resisted colonial rule were removed. European settlement was forbidden, and colonial administrators were based in the eastern part of the region, about eighty miles from Uukwaluudhi. It is unlikely that Nangombe had ever seen a white person other than a missionary before she was investigated for murder. Why, then, did officials take such a direct interest in this case? The killing of illegitimate children was not unusual, although this was usually done upon birth, but officials perceived this killing as fundamentally different from an infanticide. To them, it was more shocking than the murder of a man by another man in a drunken brawl, or the death of a woman beaten by her husband - cases which rarely made it to colonial courts. And yet this does not entirely explain the intervention of colon ial officials. The vast majority of all murder cases were returned to native courts to be settled as local leaders saw fit. The means by which this particular killing was noticed and pursued by colonial officials underscores the capricious and unpredictable nature of colon ialism in Ovamboland, but it also hints at how officials understood threats to their control.

35

NAN , NAO 46 f 45/1/6, Greyling diary (7 August 1941) : 5.

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For a brief period between 1938 and 1942, officials investigated every known murder and rape in the region , and referred all capital crimes to Windhoek. Local European staff opposed this intervention from the capital and were strikingly nonchalant about leaving murders to native courts, which submitted sketch y reports of their proceedings and decisions only occasionally. One official argued in 1939 against the administration's re-investigation of old murder cases which had been settled in native tribunals , asserting that "it would be most cruel to leave the guilt y person in a constant state of fear that any day they may be dragged before our Courts even though they have fully discharged their obligations according to Tribal Law and Custom.T" At the end of 1942, administrators in the capital heeded the pleas of local officials overwhelmed by police work and severely limited the number of cases requiring administrative intervention." And yet even this administrative blip does not fully explain why Nangombe's case went to trial. Nangombe was the only woman from Ovamboland tried in a colonial court between 1915 and 1955, although she was not the only accused murderess. The colonial government of Ovamboland, no less than its subjects , was caught in competing worlds. Officials considered Ovambo justice to be either overly mild or overly cruel. They were shocked by what they saw as inadequ ate local penaltie s for murder, which were based on financial reparation. But they were also shocked by practices they considered inhumane , such as the execution of witches and trial by ordeal. And yet, given the limits of colonial resources and control, officials frequently put their own sense of justice and morality aside, or even adopted local notions of ju stice, arguing, for example, that financial reparation was sufficient punishment for some killings. Sometimes they sent cases back to tribal courts when asked by powerful Ovambo allies. At other times, officials allowed tribal courts to judge practices they considered reprehensible, such as abortion or manslaughter, simply for lack of time to pursue them . Rarely were the decisions of these courts recorded by colonials. The feature that marked Nangombe's case as different from the countless murders officials remanded to customary law was the many ways in which she had transgressed . Colonial officials, like missionaries and traditional rulers, were extremely concerned to control women . In this 'indirect' system of government, officials frequently had no idea who was replacing a deceased headman. Yet they 36 NAN , NAO 45 f 45/1, Assistant Native Commissioner Oshikango to Additional Native Commissioner for South West Africa (9 March 1939). 37 NAN , NAO 45 f 45/ 1, Secretary for South West Africa /Chief Native Commissioner to Northern Native Commissioners, 30 December 1942.

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micromanaged important aspects of domestic relations. They barred women of all ages from leaving Ovamboland, on the premiss that this removed them from male control and resulted in increased prostitution at labour centres . They passed a law requiring the father of an illegitimate child to pay the woman's family a fine in cattle. And officials outlawed abortion, imposing mandatory penalties for the practice which were harsher than those often assigned in local courts for murder." Colonial, traditional and mission spheres were not distinct worlds; the vicissitudes of everyday life constantly entangled them with one another. And so the many conflicts over female sexuality and reproduction did not take place in circumscribed arenas. Colonial officials sided with missionaries in attempts to stamp out abortion and premarital pregnancy, but not if an important Ovambo ally was involvedr'" similarly, missionaries who sheltered young women fleeing forced initiation found themselves reprimanded by colonial officials who, concerned with what they perceived to be a disintegrating social order, sided with non-Christian parents in an attempt to uphold hierarchies of age and gender.i" Some chiefs , whose authority increasingly rested on colonial approval, ceased to expel pregnant girls and even, as in Nangombe's case, reported the murder of 'unclean' children . Colonial officials, eager to maintain good relations with chiefs, usually looked the other way if pregnant girls were expelled and often sent infanticide cases back to traditional courts where penalties were light. But this case, of Nangombe's defiance of traditional controls by becoming pregnant before initiation and then returning home with her child, followed by her defiance of the state by murdering the child on her mother's orders, entangled colonial, traditional and mission spheres in a unique way, for all three found it horrifying. Thus the chief sent a message to the native commissioner, who sent an acting magistrate to investigate, who in tum called a mission doctor to perform an autopsy. Male Ovambo 'experts' who were questioned asserted that Nangombe had no right to kill her daughter, as this was the duty of a male relative .t' The head of her household complained that she and her mother "were bringing trouble to my home-

38

McKittrick , "Conflict and social change' ," esp. chapters 4-6.

One headman had numerous complaints that he had impregnated young girls filed against him; in at least one case, a girl he impregnated died from an abortion, but he was not punished (NAN , NAO 91, f36/3). 39

40

NAN . NAO 14f6/4/1,CNCtoGotthardt,20etoberI945.

The sole colonial report which recorded infanticides contradicts this, as the perpetrators were equally men and women (NAN, NA0 60 f 12/1, April-September. 1947 report, 9). 41

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stead."42 It was a momentary alliance between systems of authority often in conflict, and its source was twofold: a common understanding of what rational reason would spur an Ovambo mother to kill her daughter - an understanding that originated in Ovambo , not European, views of the world - and the fact that a young woman had transcen ded social boundaries. Yet because she had been obeying her mother, Nango mbe was not solely responsible for her actions - she was behaving as a good daughter should. Thu s her mother was implicated as well. In their sense of Nangornbe's proper place in the social hierarchy, and in their view of Nango mbe as an actor responsible for her deeds and capable of explaining them, colonial and Ova mbo offic ials achieved conse nsus, even if their moral reading of her actions differed. The resulting testimony is highly structured. We do not know the substance of the official's question s, how he was regarded by the community, what the witnesses thought he wanted to hear, how qualified the translator was, or whether the answers were shortened, stripped of their context, or paraphrased. And yet, jud ging from the consistency of the testimony, there did not appear to be any ambiguity in people's minds as to why the murder had been committed. The magistrate spo ke to the head of Nangombe's household, his wife, the local headman, and neighbours, both male and female. Most noted that Nangombe had conceived the child before undergoing initiation, and no one seemed to doubt that this was a rational motive for killing it, although several found the murder objectionable for various reasons . Thro ughout the testimony, Nangombe and her mother were reported to be in their "sound and sober senses" - indicative that witnesses were asked abou t the mental state of both women and replied that nothing was arniss.f Numerous witnesses also reported that the women had quarrelled incessant ly over whether the child shou ld live or die. Based on a belief that Nangombe, urged on by her mother, had wilfully killed her daughter, Ovamboland officials committed the two women for trial in the Supreme Court of Windhoek. But in charging Nangornbe, the Ovamboland administration released her to a new environment in which she would face very different assumptions about morality, motherhood and rational behaviour. It was a result Nangombe could not have predicted, for it was unprecedented in Ovamboland. Her attempt at recon ciliation and re-integration failed, and she and her mother were incarcerated in a colonial jai l to await trial. NA N, NAO 46 f45/ 1/ 16, Greylingdiary, 7 August 1941, 7. N AN, NAO 46 f 45/ 1/16, Greyling diary, 7 August 1941; also testimony taken by c:r. Bourquin, acting Ovamboland magistrate (date unknown, but after 7 August): statements by Nangornbe' s father, his headman , the head of Nangombe' s household, and his wife. 42

43

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Bodies and minds on trial The trial was scheduled for 21 September 1941 in the Grootfont ein Circu it Court . At least eleven Ovambo witnesses, plus a missionary doctor and the District Surgeon of Ovamboland , were brought to Groot fontein/" And yet something happened to delay the trial. Apparentl y Nangomb e had had a seizure in the Grootfonteinjail, and either this or some other event led the court to question her mental stability'? The court was required by law to investigate her state of mind - an undertaking which would have exceeded the length of the circuit session. Thus the witnesses were sent home and Nangombe and her mother boarded a train to Windhoek, where they were held in jail until 20 October 1941, when the court convened to decide whether Nangombe was "mentally defective," and instructed her mother to leave the witness stand during the proceedings." By turning the trial into a forum to ascertain Nangombe 's psycholo gical health, court officials altered the entire choreography of the case. Nangombe's mother was transformed from a defendant to a witness. The court never examined her role in the killing . The mother, meanwhile, sided with Nangombe 's attorney in her daughter 's defence. And the goals of both the prosecution and the defence were altered , from proving or disproving guilt to proving or disproving mental defectiveness. The European lawyers, doctors and j udge in the courtroom saw before them two possibil ities: to kill her child, a mother had to be evil or insane. Nangombe's defence took painstaking steps to portray Nangombe as an obedient daughter and a good moth er.F The court then moved on to questions of her mental capab ilities and physical health . The court 's new, self-appointed task eliminated poss ible ambiguities that might have accompan ied a decision about guilt in the circumstances laid out before them. It was one thin g to label a person sane or insane in her own best interest; it was quite another to convict or acquit of murder a teenager who had killed her child under pressure from her mother. Instead, the lawyers, doctors and judge set about reasserting colonial boundaries and placing Nangombe firmly within racial, gendered and medical categories . 44 The documents listing these witnesses have been lost, although they probably included people who gave testimony in the local investigation, including the local headman and adult residents of the house where Nangombe and her mother lived. 45 The Grootfontein Circuit Court records are missing, and the events of this stage of the trial arc unclear. 46 NAN, SCW 1/1/107, case 34, 1. 47 NAN, SCW 1/1/107, case 34, 5--6, 10.

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Perhaps the most poignant symbol of the equation of hybridity with transgression was Nangombe's attire in court. She wore her beads, girdle and other traditional dress under a European dress given to her by someone; this led the lawyers and judge in the court to assume mistakenly for much of the trial that she was pregnant - that is, to assume that she had again transgressed reproductive controls and was producing another problematical illegitimate child, thus re-enacting the entire drama. The court turned to something which it believed defied ambiguity - the matter of Nangombe's health . Spurred by a belief that she could be labelled either sane or insane, the judge, lawyers and doctors set about determining the state of her body and her mind. Her mother became an expert on this subject. She said her daughter had been subject to what the translator termed aanval (attacks or fits) since she was a child." She also said, according to the translator, that her daughter had siekte van

mal- 'sickness of the mind,' or mental illness. (The translation is dubious,as people in Ovamboland did not link epilepsy with mental illness.") The Ovamboland District Surgeon argued for lapses into insanity caused by probable epilepsy. His evidence consisted of descriptions of seizures (though he never witnessed one) and what he saw as her irrational answers to his questions, which were posed to her in a jail cell over repeated visits. The argument for irrationality was supported by the Windhoek District Surgeon, who said Nangombe seemed to have no understanding of the seriousness of her actions or that she was facing a murder trial and possible jailor death sentence, as she had confessed freely to him everything she had done.P" In an attempt to determine whether her seizures were the result of epilepsy or "hysteria," there was also extensive discussion of how often Nangombe had them . But her mother did not know how many days were in a European week, how many weeks in a European month, or how many months in a European calendar year. She did not know the European names of weekdays or months, and she could not speculate on how long the seizures lasted in the court's terms, not knowing what a minute or an hour was. And she was unclear on when they had begun, since she did not know Nangombe's age as figured numerically by Europeans. She thus repeatedly gave contradictory answers about her daughter's age when the seizures began and the frequency and length of the seizures.t' 48

NAN , sew 1/1/107 case 34, 4.

49

Aune Negongo, interviewed July 1996; Oiva Shivute, interviewed June 1996.

50

NAN , sew 1/1/107 case 34,15-16,28.

51

NAN , sew 1/1/107 case 34, 5--6.

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The lengthy discussion of chronology, at times bordering on the ludicrou s, is an apt metaphor for the entire trial, where two cultures and explanatory models appeared to exist side by side yet never met. In Ovamboland , they had merged; in the Windhoek courthouse, they were rigorously segregated. Nangombe and her mother, and their communit y, had an explanation for her act and could contextualize it within debates over the meaning of pre-initiation pregnancy in Ovamboland. But this explanation and this context were never raised directly during the trial; the testimony from Ovamboland was in the case file, but there was little evidence that it had been consulted. Indeed, the court seemed to have no interest in establishing what events had preceded the murder or the cultural terrain on which Nangombe moved. Nowhere was the prohibition of illegitimate children mentioned, or the existence of penalties against their mothers. There is no reference to the mother's pressure on Nangombe or to witnesses' statements that both were sane at the time of the crime. Nangombe's own explanation was ignored and she was never questioned in court . By rendering her mute, the court exerted its own powerful form of control. Instead, current s of other debates swirled around Nangombe and her mother in the courtroom. Were Ovambo natives as intelligent as South African natives? Had Nangombe misund erstood the doctor 's questions out of boredom, native stupidity, or mental deficiency - and was this to be measured against European or "native" standards of intelligence? Were Nangombe's seizures related to epileps y or the female malady of "hysteria"? Did they occur when she was menstruating? Did they affect her mental state? The doctors who examined Nangombe and testified were, by their own admission, grossly underqualified to gauge her mental health. They and other Europeans in the court were operating with a variety of concepts distilled from "ethnopsychiatry," although South African psychiatrists themselves did not agree on whether Africans and Europeans experienced mental illness similarly and differed on whether perceived African inferiority was due to race or to culture. 52 The notion that normal Africans were close in temperament to European psychotics, current in much ethnopsychiatry at the time, was revealed when the District Surgeon for Ovamboland testified, "It seems that there are times when the girl is

almost sane, p ractically sane. At other times [.. .JI should say that her mental condi-

52 Jock McCulloch, Colonial Psychiatry and the 'Afr ican Mind ' (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995); Saul Dubow, Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995), csp. ch. 6. Also WulfSachs, Black Hamlet (London: Bles, 1937).

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tion is not wholly normal.,,53 The court's rhetoric evinced a belief that insane Africans, by virtue of being mentally proximate to 'normal' Africans, could live and function in their communities in a way that the European insane could not. The Attorney General thought that there was nothing in Nangombe's "abnormality" which would keep her from "being an ordinary member of kraal society," and the Ovamboland District Surgeon argued that her mother was probably incapable of diagnosing her own daughter as insane.r' Yet despite the courtroom debates about differences in mental capacities of "natives" and Europeans, Nangombe was ultimately judged by criteria more gendered and medicalized than racialized. The effects of epilepsy were assumed to be the same in Nangombe, a "native," as they were in Europeans. And ultimately, mental and bodily weaknesses were believed to be linked in her case as in others. Her actions, like those of other women accused of murder, were viewed through the gendered lens of a colonial medical practice that linked irrational behaviour to women - especially (though not exclusively) the pregnant and / or physically weak. In this highly racialized society, Nangombe was not treated with noticeable difference from women of other races tried for murder over the course of thirty years . The body of evidence is limited, since few women of any race were accused of murder in South West Africa . But in many of these cases - most of which involved the murder of a child, a spouse, or a foetus - the women were seen as distraught and mentally weak. Where this was not explicitly stated, it was often assumed. The sentences for female murderers were far lighter than they were for their male counterparts. Thus when a domestic servant of unknown race (her name was Afrikaans) was given a five-year prison sentence for killing her child, the judge stressed that although the death penalty was permitted , the law allowed leniency for "an unfortunate woman like you who has killed her child.,,55 A German woman who shot and killed her drunken husband was said in her 1925 trial to have an "inferior mentality" (illustrated primarily in an apparently perverse tendency to disobey her husband) and to suffer from "excessive bodily weakness"; she was judged guilty but insane ." One year later, a white woman who killed the husband she claimed had assaulted her with a sjambok was diagnosed as "totally insane" as evidenced by "a 53 NAN , sew 1/1/107 case 34, 10, emphasis mine; cf McCulloch, Colonial Psychiatry, 82; Megan Vaughan, Curing Their Ills (Palo Alto CA: Stanford UP, 1991): 100-28 . 54 NAN , sew 1/1/107, case 34,26. 55 NAN , sew I/I/2,case24/1920. 56 NAN , sew 1/1I2I ,case21!1925.

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very high grade of stupidity." She was committed to an asylum. 57 A series of women who killed their children either had their cases dismissed (the reason is rarely noted in the documentation) or received very light sentences. Still others who procured abortion found the providers charged and punished, but not themselves.Y Through the testimony and observations of the doctors, Nangombe's mother and her cellmate (who described Nangombe's seizures), a completely new body of evidence consistent with this pattern was constructed for the Windhoek trial- evidence which dealt almost exclusively with biological sickness and its perceived link to Nangombe's psychological state. It was this evidence that was discussed against a backdrop of the unstated beliefs and conventions of the day - ideas from which Nangombe and her mother were excluded. While the endeavour to determine Nangombe's mental capabilities could be seen as humane in one sense , it simultaneously reinforced state power. As Saul Dubow argues, "One might plausibly speak of a discourse of psychological domination" which "legitimised the right of whites to make decisions for and on behalf of Africans 'P? - as well as for white men to make decis ions for women of all races . Nangombe's brother and others who knew her argued in 1996 that she was not insane, an assertion consistent with the testimony of Ovambo witnesses. This is, of course, also consistent with the tremendous amount of agency 'pregnant girls ' were accorded, and the insistence that they were responsible and thus should pay for their misdeeds. Yet even the court produced a remarkably mixed assessment of Nangombe's mental defectiveness. The District Surgeon for Ovamboland refused to classify Nangombe as insane although he appeared to sympathize with her plight. The Windhoek District Surgeon, far less sympathetic to her cause , argued that she answered all his questions coherently and showed no evidence of insanity at all, except that she apparently could not understand the consequences of the charges against her. At the end of his testimony, however, he refused to state that she was either capable or incapable of understanding the proceedings. And yet the whole point of the process was to classify Nangombe, and ultimately this was done. It was on the evidence of epilepsy alone that the judge justified his ruling of insanity. While

57

NAN , SCW 1/1/22, case 1/1926.

There is no noticeabl e change over a thirty-year span, but the evidence is limited. See NAN , SCW 1/1/2 case 24/1920 ; SCW 1/1/2 1 case 21/1925 ; SCW 1/1/22 case 9/1926 and 1/1926; SCW 1/1/44 case 43/1929; SCW 1/1/83 case 19/1936 ; SCW 1/1/98 case 5/1939 ; SCW 1/1/131 ease 37/1951. 58

59

Dubow, Scientific Racism, 245.

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the premiss of the judgment was universalizing - epilepsy equals insanity - the verdict was consistent with ' modernizing' reforms elsewhere in the colonies at th is time which den ied non-European forms of knowledge and employed biomedical models to reinforc e social boundaries.P'' Nangombe was committ ed to a psychiatric hospital in South Africa, where she spent almost five years. In 1945, the hospital recommended her for discharge, and in 1946 her mother requested that her daughter stay with her in Ongandjera. And so she returned home, to a new village that knew little of her history. Claiming she was now a Christian, she had taken a new name for herself - Rusia (Lucia, common among Christian Ovambo women ); she spoke languages her family had never heard before and , according to her brother, she was in ill health as a result of her incarceration. She married, but lived with her brother and his wife rather than with her husband, as befitted a ' pregnant girl' who could not be a senior wife. She bore one more child, a son, but died in 1957, when the child was still young. Nangombe's brother 's wife cared for the child. Her brother and sister-in-law, dubi ous about her claims to Christianity (she lacked a baptism certificate), buried her tradit ionally, outside the church graveyard - a final denial of the possibility ofhybridity in her universe.

Conclusion This case unfolded in two arenas: the world of a rural African community scandalized by the pregnan cy of an uninit iated girl and divided over what consequences her child bore, and the world of European lawyers, j udges and doctors who tried the young mother for murder in the Supreme Court and judged her insane for killin g her child. Both worlds were colonial worlds, yet they had markedly different understandings of the case, ground ed in fundamentally oppo sed conceptions of the social implication s of pregnancy and the possibility offemale agency. The world-v iew of the Ovamboland colonial admini stration was shaped by the African community which it ruled, but with which it also had to coexist. The opening chapters of Nangombe 's story are enmeshed in a dominant ideology which granted young women agency and responsibility for their deeds - an ideology in which Ovambo , mission and coloni al authoritie s found common ground. In uniting

60 Stoler & Cooper, "Introduction," 6 12; Lynette Jackson, "Gendered Disorder in Colonial Zimbabwe: Case Analyses of African Female Inmates at the Ingutsheni Mental Hospital, 193257," in The Societies ofSouth ern Africa in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Collected Seminar Papers 19, no. 45; London: Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 1993): 71.

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them by necessity, this discourse obscured differences between European and African perceptions of gender, power and reproduction. Nangombe' s actions can be read in the context of the cultural logic of infanticide, and this is how the investigating magistrate represented them in his report. But the final setting in the Windhoek courthouse invoked a more purely European discourse which linked femaleness, physical weakness and irrational behaviour. The explanations for the murder in these two contexts were radicall y different, one originating in Nangombe herself, the other from a team of European doctors and lawyers who never solicited her opinion. Nowhere is the fragmentary and confused nature of the coloni al project more in evidence than here. Reviewing the two sets of records - the Ovamboland investigation and the Windhoek trial - one almost feels that they describe distinct cases involving separate people : one a threat to society, the other an object to be pitied or protected from herself. In Ovamboland, Nangombe the whole, competent person was seen to have acted too independently and thereby to have recklessly jeopardized the patterns of dominance and subordination at the core of society. Her individual actions were her respon sibilit y, but they could not be separated from their impact on others, and it was on this basis that she had been punished. In Windhoek, Nangombe was seen to have acted irrationall y and uncontrollabl y, as no sane mother could , and her actions bore no expl icitly recognized consequences for the social order. Whatever penalty the court inflicted on her would thus bejustified as in her best interests, as defined by the state. She was thus absolved of responsibility for her actions, but she paid a high price for this absolution, for she was also absolved of her agency. The two views of her personhood could not have been more different. Yet the differences of interpretation do not cut through every level of this case. To her community, to the Ovambo administration, and to the Windhoek court, Nangombe had broken boundaries painstakingly erected between traditional and modem , between parental authority and daughterly obedience , between male dominance and female submissiveness. Almost everything she did defied these categories and hierarchies, conforming to some while simultaneou sly challenging others . Nangombe chall enged widely accepted Ovambo ideas about sexual behaviour among unin itiated women and about the dangers of illegitimate children; mission ideas of morality, both through her pregnancy and through the murder; state monopolies on killing and European understandings of motherhood ; and European notions of sanity and insanity. She was seen as traditional and modem , a killer and a good mother, sane yet also insane. Her pregnancy and initial insistence that her child deserved to live defied tradition. Her nurturing of the child made her a good mother, while in

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killing it she became a bad mother who at the same time embodied the obedient daughter who respected tradition. Yet even the murder was ambiguous, because the child had lived and because native ' experts' insisted that only men could kill illegitimate children. Finally, the doctors called to testify to her mental state asserted that she was not quite sane, not quite insane - they could not say for sure. Nangombe was a hybrid, acting outside established channels of authority and accepted categories. And yet she did not pick and choose her positions at will. In some cases, she was virtually forced into her position by forces over which she had little control. In others, her agency was circumscribed and ambiguous at best. It is useful to return to the image of her dressed for court . Nangombe chose to continue wearing her traditional dress ; she may have put the European dress over it willingly, as European clothing had a certain scarcity and status in Ovamboland. But had she refused to dress 'decently' for court, she would have been forced to do so. We cannot know what the resulting combination meant to her, or the extent to which she partook in its creation, and our lack of knowledge about her opinions and motives mirrors her inability to make these things known. Instead, we know only that the court read her dress as evidence of pregnancy - yet another transgres sion . At one level, Nangombe's story looks like the epitome of powerlessness: a young woman falls victim to one regime of proper behaviour and, upon conforming, is punished by another, competing regime. Her case caution s us against assuming that, becau se the categories of colonized and colonizer are constructed, they lacked reality to those who lived inside them. While these categorie s were constantl y in need of redefinition and reinforcement, they embodied balances of power which had a profound impact on people 's experience . And yet it is also possible to read in her story the different discourses which operated in one coloni al landscape , for it reveals how different conceptions of reproduction, legitimacy and control over young women intersected, combined and competed . It illustrates the attempts of dominant groups to control women 's reproductive potential and the strange alliances these groups formed in their quest, but it also indicates ways in which a young woman conceived of herself and her world and attempted, in a time of change and ambiguity, to rewrite the meanings of key aspects oflife associated with reproduction.

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WORKS C IT ED Bozzoli, Belinda, with Mmantho Nkotsoe . Women of Phokeng: Cons ciousness, Life Strat egy and Migrancy in Sout h Africa, 1900-1983 (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann , 1991).

Chanock , Martin . Law, Custom and Social Order (Cambridge : Cambridge UP, 1985). -

- . "Making Customary Law: Men, Women and Courts in Colonial Northern Rhodesia," in African Women and the Law : Historical Perspectives , ed. Margaret Jean Hay & Marcia Wright

(Boston MA : Boston University African Studies Center, 1982): 53--67. Comaroff, John. "Images of Empire, Contests of Conscience: Models of Colonial Domination in South Africa ," American Ethnologist 16 (1989): 661-85 . Cooper, Frederick , & Ann Laura Stoler. "Introduction: Tensions of Empire: Colonial Control and Visions of Rule," American Ethnologist 16 (1989) : 609-21 . -

- , ed. Tensions of Emp ire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley : U of Californi a 1',1998).

Dirks, Nicholas, ed. Colo nialism and Culture (Ann Arbor : U of Michigan 1', 1992). Dubow, Saul. Scientific Racism in Modern Sou th Africa (Cambridge : Cambridge UP, 1995). Hayes, Patricia, Jeremy Silvester, Marion Wallace & Wolfram Hartmann , ed. Namibia under South African Rule : Mobility and Containment, 1915-46 (London : James Currey, 1998).

Jackson, Lynette. 'Ge ndered Disorder in Colonial Zimbabwe: Case Analyses of African Female Inmates at the Ingutsheni Mental Hospital, 1932-57," in The Socie ties ofSouth ern Africa in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Collected Seminar Papers 19, no. 45; London : Institute of Common-

wealth Studies, 1993): 71-79. Kreike, Emmanuel. "Recreating Eden: Agro-Eco logical Change, Food Security and Environmental Diversity in Southern Angola and Northern Namibia, 1890-1960" (doctoral dissertation , Yale University, 1996). Lebzelter, Viktor. Rassen und Kulturen in Sudafrika: Wissenschafiliche Ergebnisse einer Forschungsre ise nach Sud- und Sudwestafrika in den Jahren 1926-1928, vol. 2: Eingeborenenkulturen

(Leipzig : Hiersemann, 1934). Loeb, Edwi n. In Feudal Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1962). Mallory, Charles . " Some Aspects of the Mission Policy and Practice of the Church of the Province of South Africa in Ovamboland" (MA thesis, Rhodes University, 1971). Mann , Kristen. Marrying Well: Marriag e, Status and Social Change among the Educated Elite in Colonial Lagos (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985). -

- , & Richard Roberts, ed. Law in Coloni al Af rica (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 1991).

McClendon, Thomas. "Tradition and Domestic Struggle in the Courtroom : Customary Law and the Control of Women in Segregation -Era Natal," International Journal of African Histo rical Studies 28 (1995): 527--61.

McCu lloch, Jock . Colonial Psychiatry and the 'African Mind ' (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995).

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McK ittrick, Meredith. "Co nflict and Social Change in northcm Nam ibia, 1850-1 950" (doctoral dissertation, Stan ford University, 1995). Rose, Lionel. The Massacre of the Innocents: Inf anticide in Britain, 1800-1 939 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986). Sachs, Wulf. Black Hamlet (London: Bles, 1947). Schmidt, Elizabeth. Peasants. Traders and Wives (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann , 1992). Scully, Pamela. Liberating the Family? Gender and British Slave Emancipation in the Rural West-

ern Cape, South Africa. / 823-/853 (Portsmouth NI-I: Heinemann, 1997). - -. "Narratives of Infanticide in the Aftermath of Slave Emancipation in the NineteenthCentury Cape Colony, South Africa," Canadian Journal of Afr ican Studies 30 (1996) : 88-105 . Stoler, Ann Laura. "Rethinking Colonial Categories: European Communities and the Boundaries of Rule," Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (1989) : 134-61 . Thomas, Nicholas. " Colonial Conversions: Difference, Hierar chy and History in Earl y Twentieth -Centur y Evangelica l Propaganda," Comparative Studies in Society and History 34 ( 1992): 366- 89. To njes , Hermann . Ovamboland: Land. Leute, Mission (Berlin : Martin Warneck, 1911). Vaughan, Megan. Curing Their Ills (Palo Alto CA: Stanford UP, 1991).

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A Threat to the Nation and a Threat to the Men The Banning of Depo-Provera in Zimbabwe 1981 Amy Kaler

Introduction

I

N 1981, THE NEW GOVERNMENT OF ZIMBABW E banned the use of the injectibl e contraceptive Depo-Provera. In most accounts of the transition, this decision appear s as a minor administrative episode: The Ministry of Health [...] assumed in 1981 the responsibility of running the activities formerly undertaken by the Family Planning Association [...] There was one other very important reason why the Ministry of Health took over the activities. The government wished to have the Association stop the use of Depo-Provera, a highly controversial, long-lasting birth control drug. The government was concerned about the safety of the drug. The Association balked, which gave the government yet another, if not the principal, reason for its takeover. I

However, there is much more to this decision than bureaucratic relat ions between different branch es of the state and parastatal organizations . This bland mention ofan administrative transfer of respons ibilities conceals complex cultural and political dynamics involving men, women , the making of children and the making of decisions about making children, which illuminate the complicated relation ship between the liberators of the new state of Zimbabwe and the reproductive powers of the women of Zimbabwe. The controversy over Depo 's place in Zimbabw ean society was deeper and broader than nationalist fears about white use of family planning method s to reduce

I P. Manga, "The Transformation of Zimbabwe' s Health Care System: A Review of the White Paper on Health," Social Science and Medicine 27.11 (1988) : 1131-38.

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the African population. As a technology, Depo possessed qualities that set it squarely in the centre of struggles within marriages, families and communities over who would control the timing and pacing of childbearing. Among ordinary Zimbabweans, Depo-Provera in the hands of nurses and paramedical workers, dispensed at the request of individual women, was clearly understood as a threat to idealized notions of male control of female fertility. The threat Depo posed was twofold - the widespread promotion of this contraceptive was perceived as a tool of the Rhodesian Front to keep the African population in check; and the secret use of Depo by indiv idual women boded ill for male decision-making power over women 's fertility. The manner in which it was delivered - one injection every three months - meant that use of Depo, more than other forms of contraception such as the pill or the IUD, was known only by the women in question and their health-care providers. It could thus spread invisibly and, in the opinion of many Zimbabweans, invidiously, through communities, and be kept secret from husbands , in-laws and elders. By 1981, however, that moment had passed. Instead, the new black leadership of Zimbabwe faced a transitional situation in which pre-existing power relations were being interrogated and in many cases inverted. At that time, state intervention in institutional structures of fertility regulation, such as the FPAR 's Depo-Provera programme, was defined as an anticolonial act. In analysing the Zimbabwean decision to ban Depo-Provera, I am thus dealing with an historical moment which is quite rare in the literature, producing a variant on the politics of fertility control. In this essay I draw on contemporary sources, including published and unpublished material; and on retrospective interviews with former family-planning workers (FPWs) and middle-aged and elderly Zimbabweans from Wedza and Buhera districts, conducted in 1996. I demonstrate that the history of fertility regulation in general , and Depo-Provera in particular, led to the construction of Zimbabwean women 's reproductive abilities as a terrain of struggle between different political interest groups . By examining the Depo decision as part of an ongoing struggle for control over women's bodies, I am following the theoret ical lead of other Africanists and theorists of reproduction. Susie Pedersen makes a similar argument in her study of the colonial controversy over female circumcision in early twentieth-century Kenya? She argues that women's bodies can also be constructed as national bodies , sites where national honour can be established, threatened and

2 Susie Pedersen, "National Bodies, Unspeakable Acts: The Sexual Politics of Colonial Policy Making," Journal ofModern History 63 (1991): 647- 80.

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defended. In her case , 'honour' consisted specifically in British colonial ideas of morality, opposed by what they defined as African savagery manifested in the practice of female circumcision.' In Zimbabwe, the physiological site was slightly different and the stakes were fecundity rather than moral or immoral sexuality. However, like the controversy over circumcision, women's bodies in the Depo debate were both individual and social entities. The body into which the FPAR sought to inject Depo-Provera was not only that of an individual but also that of the Zimbabwean polity"

Depo-Provera and the symbolism of medicine In Zimbabwean, specifically Shona, symbolic systems, the connection between the health of women's bodies and the health of the polity resonates very deeply. Many Zimbabwean writers have noted the intimate link between women's reproductive health and activities and the health of the people and communities around them. Defin itions of illness contained a variety of moral proscriptions and, in almo st all instances , it was women's morality that was so proscribed . Women must remain ' pure', they must be virgins at marriage , they must be fertile, they must not commit adultery, they must satisfy the needs of husbands , children and in-laws before their own and so on. Failure to meet these cond itions renders women - and, with more serious implications, their families - open to all forms of morbidity and mortality.5

J See also Ann Stoler, "Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in Twentieth Century Colonial Culture," American Ethnologist 16.4 (1989): 634-60, for a discussion of similar issues in a very different colonial context, that of Southeast Asia. 4 Men's bodies can also be cast in this role, although this is less common . For example , in 1995, rumours circulated in Zimbabwe that USAlD was dumping defective condoms (which leaked and burst) in the country, with callous disregard for the African lives put at risk of contracting HIV through the faulty condoms. (One alternative explanation held that American condoms were simply not tough enough for the superior virility of Zimbabwean men!) In the winters of 1995 and 1996, when police used tear-gas to dispel University of Zimbabwe students who were protesting about perceived corruption and the betrayal of the Zimbabwean polity by politicians, wall posters and rumours held that the tear-gas contained female hormones which could sterilize its male targets, rendering them unable to reproduce and symbolically emasculating them. 5 Frances Chinemana, "Liberated Health in Zimbabwe? The Experience of Women 19811983," in Women '.I' Health and Apartheid: The Health of Women and Children and the Future of Progressive Primary Health Care in Southern Africa, cd. Marcia Wright, Zena Stein & Jean Scandlyn (Frankfurt am Main: Medico International, 1989): 94. See also Michael Bourdillon, The Shona People (Harare: Mambo, 1980): 15, 48, and Rudo Gaidzanwa, Images of Women in Zimbabwean Literature (Harare : College Press, 1985).

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Women's fertility and sexual activities were crucial to social health. Thus, in purifying women's bodies of a chemical tainted by global association with racism and neocolonialism in the interests of bringing harmony and liberation to Zimbabwe, the actions of the first Minister of Health, Herbert Ushewokunze, were strongly rooted in cultural logic . The rejection of the Depo injection also has historical roots in African communities ' suspicion of white medical interventions on the grounds that they were Trojan horses, seemingly benevolent things which in fact would kill and mutilate the Africans who used them. From the 1940s, rumours circulated about the effects of both preventive and curative medicines in rural and urban communities. Most of these rumours focused on the effect of white medicine on the sexual and reproductive systems of Africans: in particular, that these medicines would sterilize Africans, or render them physiologically as well as politically impotent - yet another manifestation of the construction of sexuality and fertility as a political battlefield in Rhodesia. This phenomenon is not limited to Rhodesia . Across the continent, medical technologies appear to have occupied a central place in the evolving imaginations of both whites and Africans throughout the colonial period." Luise White points out that of all Western medical technologies, injection emerged as the one around which African interpretations and rumours coalesced most thickl y" Although many contemporary medical writers and missionaries reported that Africans responded enthusiastically to injections, White suggests that the behaviour of the Africans who came to clinics in search of cures does not represent the full range of African ideas about injections. She found that, in the memory of elderl y Ugandans, injections were regarded as sources of power, but that this power was not entirel y benign. Injectionstories "presented grim ideas about medical expertise and therapeutic power" as well as being reminders of the alien cultural and symbolic systems that underlay Western medicine.f Her findings in early twentieth-century Uganda are similar to mine in

Rhodesia later in the century, where the injectible Depo escaped from the intentions

6 See Steven Feiennan , "Struggles for Control: the Social Roots of Health and Healing in Modem Africa," African Studies Review 28 (1982): 73-148 ; Megan Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Palo Alto CA: Stanford UP, 1991), and Luise White, '" They Could Make Their Victims Dull': Genders and Genres, Fantasies and Cures in Colonial Southern Uganda," American Historical Review (December 1995): 1379-1402. 7 White, " Victims," 1391- 95. x White, "Victims," 1381.

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of its providers and took on meanings of its own , meanings associated with im morality and national decline. Even before D epo appeared on the scene, sterility and the destruction of fertility were associated with invol vement w ith white goods an d med icines . For example, in the 197 0s a programme to treat drinking water to prevent cho lera was accused of being a means of ki lling people by act ua lly sp readi ng the di sease.? and , throughout the decade, ru mours of ste rilization and toxicity dogged the Mi n istry of Health 's efforts to dissem inate pi lls an d injections for problems like measles and ma laria. l? Mr Makaya: For the information of the house, this [voting to fund the FPAR] is something we are going to be sorry for because so many Africans. after having heard of this, they will not go to hospital, they will not tum up at the clinics to be vaccinated. I am living with Africans and I am telling you what the Africans are thinking. They say the Europeans are trying to get rid of the African population [...]. We are getting into difficulties when there is an outbreak of smallpox in the country and the vaccinators are sent into the Tribal Trust Land because we will hardly get any people to be vaccinated. They will say there is a certain medicine which has the property to destroy all means of this and that, and their arguments will be hard to correct. 11

The racial, cultural an d anticolonial dimension s of the debate shou ld not o vershadow the gendered nature of this particular struggle. As Ann Sto ler has asserted, "colonial authority [w as] [...] fundamentally structure d in gendered terms," and the admi ni stratio n of Dep o was indeed seen as a gender-s pecific form of co lonial p ower, of wh ite me n int erfe ri ng wi th the bo dies of Africa n wo men .l / As such, it challenged mal e Z im babwean poli tician s on two level s : as a threat to th e righ t of Africans to determ ine the course of the African nat ion of Zi mbabwe, and as a threat to an idealized ge nder h ierarch y in w hic h men ha d the right to me diate th e flow of new

9 National Archives of Zimbabwe (hereafter NAZ) F/118/5, Report of the Health Extension Officer for Manicaland, November 1975. 10 Secretary for Health (Rhodesia), Annual Report of the Secretary fo r Health 1973, 2,18,39. See also the Reports ofthe Secretary fo r Health for 1974, 32; 1975, p. 25; 1976,24; 1977.29; and 1979,41. II Parliamentary Debates [Rhodesia] (9 March 1966, co1.1497. 12 Stoler, "Making Empire Respectable," 635.

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technologies and new resources to 'their' women. I believe that this dual challenge, as much as the inherent flaws of Depo-Provera, accounted for the vehemence with which Depo was expelled from the Zimbabwean body politic.

Why ban Depo? Health, racism and politics Depo-Provera was introduced to Rhodesia by the FPAR III 1969, and rapidly became the most prevalent method in the programme, overtaking the contracept ive pill and the intra-uterine device by the early 1970s. By 1974 more than half of all contraceptive users were on DepoP However, on 17 June 1981, the FPAR (then simply the FPA) received a letter from the secretary to the then Minister of Health, Herbert Ushewokunze , informing them that ' Depo-Provera will be discontinued and withdrawn from use for the time being."!" In Parliament several months later, Ushewokunze was challenged on this decision by a group of white MPs. Ushewokunze, himself a medical doctor and a major participant in the military struggle for independence, had clearly been expecting this attack, and drew on his knowledge of contemporary global debates on Depo-Provera in a long, detailed and passionate response. Africa is certainly being used as a dumping ground for some of the most dangerous drugs in the world, drugs manufactured in the so-called developed countries, and Depo-Provera is one of these drugs. You will hear stories of people telling you that this drug is being used in 70 to 80 countries in the world. Look carefully at the 70 to 80 such countries, and you will find they are all in the Third World, not in the developed world. In Britain, our erstwhile colonial masters [the drug is banned for birth control] [...] Prohibited from selling the drug in the United States, the manufacturers Upjohn marketed it through their subsidiaries in Asia and Africa and in Third World countries [...] [In Rhodesia] this drug was being given predominantly to black women, and this is something I have noticed, only to black women. No prescription , but given willy-nilly to black women in the countryside [...] Now who says the Zimbabwe women are going to be experimental animals? Who says they are going to use our women as guinea pigs?IS

Ushewokunze was not actually correct in his assertion that Depo-Provera was only legal in the Third World - in 1978, for example, it was legal in ten European

"Jab takes over from pill," The Sunday Mail (15 December 1974). Family Planning Association of Zimbabwe, Annual Report 1981 (Harare: FPAR , 1981): 5. IS Parliamentary Debat es [Zimbabwe] (8 September 1981): col. 47.

13

14

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countries.!" Yet the asso ciation of Depo-Provera with genocide was also pre sent in other developing countries. For example during a debate on th e drug in the US Sen ate Committ ee on Population , a Th ai representative comp lained : Are the Thais becoming rats in an experiment? [...] The Thai government has received more and more complaints in this same vein. One journal [...] said, "It's good, isn't it, [from the presumed point of view of the United States] to have a drug like that, not only to plan births but to kill people as well. It means with one shot of the gun we get two birds."17 In Parl iament, Ushewokunze also accused the white purveyors of Depo-Provera of ob ses sive interference in African women 's fert ility: Mr Chairman, this is a very sensitive issue [...] sometimes you barter the health of your child for Depo-Provera. Mothers go to the clinic to have their children treated and are told: "If you do not agree to being given this shot of Depo-Provera your child will not be treated." - (Mrs Chinamano: Shame) - (Mr. Goddard: Unfounded accusations) - (Mrs Chinamano: Shamej.t" I have found it impossible to ascertai n wh ether or not Dep o reall y was administered w itho ut con sent on a large sca le. In interv iews conducted in 1996 and 1997, some former parti cipants in th e fam ily-planni ng mo vement ins isted th at it was. These included the Ministe r of Health, Dr Timothy Stamps, who sa t on the exe cutive commi tt ee o f the F PA R un til he resi gned in 1974. He says h is resi gn ati on was prompted by his rea lization th at th e Rh od esian Front govern ment was int ere sted o nly in population control rather th an wo men 's health. Others, including , not surpris ing ly, the former w h ite admin istrators of th e F PA R , insist that their ch eck s and balances were such that lack of informed con sent was impossib le. Neverthe less, there is evidence th at co er cive use of contrac eption occurred on wh ite-run Rhodesi an commercial farms . On e former fam ily-planning fieldworker reported: The [commercial] farmers, they wanted strong workers [...] they were motivating their workers to be on family planning. The farmers kept on saying, "I want strong workers. If you have children year after year that means you are not going to be

16 Testimony of Dr Fred Sai to Senate Committee on Population (US House of Representatives), The Depo-Provera Debate (August 8, 9, 101 978, 95th Congress, 2nd Session (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office): 2 11. 17 Testimony of Mr Tieng Pardthaisong, assistant professor of Preventive and Social Medicine at Chiang Mai University, to Senate Committeeon Population, The Depo-Provera Debate, 109. 18 Parliamentary Debates (8 September 1981): col. 61.

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strong , or else I will chase you from work." So they [women farmworkers] were motivated in another way that they were frightened. [...] the farmer will provide transport to go to the clinics so that his production won't suffer.19 We are going to put to good use the supplies of Depo-Provera which remain in the country in the sense that we have negotiated with certain veterinary organizations elsewhere which will use this Depo-Provera on horses, not on human beings, at the rate of 10 vials per horse when they are in heat.2o

The production of an anticolonial line of argument against Depo-Provera meant that in public commentary its banning would not be treated as simply a public-health measure. In the months foIIowing Ushewokunze's announcement, the reproductive systems of Zimbabwean women became constructed in the media as the site of a battle between two political forces: the former colonial masters, who were accused of disregarding Africans' health and autonomy through the promotion of Depo, and the new government, who portrayed themselves as agents of liberation in this as in many other issues. Despite this portrayal, many people, both inside and outside Zimbabwe, argue that the new government's apparent commitment to emancipation and social transformation stopped short of actualizing the promises of gender equality made during the period of armed struggle. Despite ground-breaking and important legislative initiatives such as the Legal Age of Majority Act and the Matrimonial

Causes Act, ZANU-PF's decision not to devote more effort to changing gender hierarchies in Zimbabwe are interpreted as a move by both governmental and private bodies to re-inscribe women in the domestic sphere. However, postindependence social activism did generate a new kind of gender consciousness among women, leading to the ongoing growth of an indigenous women's movement." Nevertheless, whatever their government's true motivations, the fact that Depo-Provera was banned in the USA, that it was used around the world as a white man's drug to control black women, and that it was beloved by population-control 19 Interview with Mrs. Lucy Nyamini. All the interviews cited in this article were conducted by the author with research assistants between September 1996 and May 1997. 20 Parliamentary Debates, 8 September 1981, col. 65. 21 See, for elaboration: Gay Seidman "Women in Zimbabwe: Post-Iindependence Struggles," Feminist Studies 10.3 (1984): 420-40; Susie M. Jacobs & Tracey Howard, "Women in Zimbabwe: Stated Policy and State Actions," in Women, State and Ideology, ed. Haleh Afshar (Binghamton: SUNY Press, 1987); Elinor Batezat & Margaret Mwalo, Women in Zimbabwe (Harare: SAPES, 1989); Tanya Lyons, Guns and Guerrilla Girls: Women in the Zimbabwean National Liberation Struggle (Lawrenceville NJ: African World Press, forthcoming 2001); and the ongoing work of Christine Sylvester.

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experts in South Africa, all combined to damn it in the eyes of the Zimbabwean African public. In comments outside the House of Parliament, Ushewokunze was free to go much further in making this case. He was reported in the government-controlled newspaper, The Herald , as telling cheering women at a training course at Silveira House in Harare that "The application of Depo-Provera is racist because the contraceptive is aimed only at black women," and calling on all women using the drug to ask for other contraceptives, saying, "in Zimbabwe, only black women are advised to try it. White women do not use it. It is all part of a plot by our former oppressors . It is racism.'>22 His analysis was echoed on the paper's editorial page: When a drug is banned in its country of manufacture, when it is revealed that the racist authorities in Pretoria arc prescribing the drug to African women without their knowledge - it is time for any sensible government to sit up. Which is precisely what the Government of Zimbabwe did when it decided that the contraceptive drug is not safe [...] This sounds like a typical case of the developing countries being treated as dump ing grounds for harmful drugs. Zimbabwe should watch out for more such ' convenient' Western product s, most should be dumped right back where they came from, the trash can of crass cornmercialism.P

Other popular media took up Ushewokunze's cause, including non-governmentcontrolled periodicals. The Catholic-owned weekly Mota insinuated that the FPA and its director, Dodds , were trying to retain a racist colonial grip on the bodies of Zimbabwean women. After listing the various side-effects associated with DepoProvera and noting that it was banned in many Western countries, it observed : Asi Peter Dodds anoti ngaushandiswe ehete pavatema. Nemhaka yeiko? Tinovimba kuti murume uyu haasi kutora vanhu vatema samaBobejaan nanhas i wese. [But Peter Dodds says it can be used only for the blacks . What is the reason for this? We hope that this man is not taking blacks for the baboons of todayj.>

The drug also played a key role in Dodds's resignation after nine years as director of the FPA. He resigned in protest at Ushewokunze's allegations about the dangers of the drug and about Dodds 's complicity in endangering the lives of African women. In an interesting parallel with Ushewokunze's assertion that Depo was a foreign poison inserted into the Zimbabwean polity, Dodds also blamed foreign influences 22 23

24

"Birth control drug on way out," The [ZimbabweJ Herald (6 July 1981). Editorial , The Herald (15 July 1981). "Sckuona kwedu" [As we sec it, Editorial], Moto (18 July 1981).

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for the problems surrounding the banning of the drug. In an interview, he theorized that ideologically motivated objections to Depo were brought to Zimbabwe by women who had been studying in the USA, and that the foreign ideas about distrust of modern medicine and global racist conspiracies were imported to wreck a harmonious and well-accepted family-planning programme: This goes back to the States, that fellow Stephen Minkin, he was the spokesperson for that fairly rabid women' s organization [left-wing periodical] Mother Jones , and they conducted this rabid war with Depo or anybody who used it [...]. you had this emotional rabid ill-informed opposition led by Minkin and Mother Jones . The theory we had was that among the women who retumed [from political exile] to Rhodesia when it became Zimbabwe were a substantial number who had been working for medicine in America and they came under the influence of Minkin and Mother Jones and they were all chums of Herbert [Ushewokunze] who put them into positions of authority in the ministry when affirmative action came in and they fed him the poison.e

Public Reaction to the Depo Ban The racial and political issues that crystallized at the end of the period of racial oligarchy in Zimbabwe and that were implicit in the decision to prohibit this drug were manifested in a series of debates in the letters columns of the Herald, the Sunday

Mail and other Zimbabwean periodicals. White writers framed the issue as one of African jealousy at white competence and success in medicine, much as Dodds himself framed it, while African writers saw the administration of Depo to black women as a metaphor for genocidal tendencies among whites and for white domination of an asset dear to the African nation: the fertility of its women. Some representative excerpts help to illustrate the nature of the debate: Mr Dodds' direction of the FPA makes him one of this nation 's prime assets , which is more than can be said of our egregious Minister of Health, whose every public utterance causes another wave of skilled whites to snap their suitcases shut and head for our borders, convinced that the policy of [postwar] reconciliation [between blacks and whites] is a mockery-v

25 Interview with Peter Dodds, January 1997. Minkin was a journalist who published reports that Depo was being dumped on Third World women . See Barbara Ehrenreich , M. Dowie & Stephen Minkin , "The Charge : Genocide ; The Accused : The United States Governrnent ," Mother Jones (November 1979): 26-37.

26 Dr Richard MacGowan, "Contraceptive drug is not cause of illness," letter to The Herald (30 July 1981).

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The majority of whites in this country continue to insult and humiliate Africans by calling them names. The use of Depo-Provera is a continuation of insults against the African population. The whites do not use Depo-Provera [...] the fact that African women were compelled to use it clearly implies a sinister attempt to control the African population [...] [Ushewokunze is] eliminat[ing] injustices against the African population by the former colonial Ministry of Health . We would be happy to be rid of white racism, white arrogance and human insults.F We whites are fed up with watching everything that goes right attributed to the present administration [of the country] whilst previous administrations are blamed for everything that goes wrong. We are tired of continuous threats and insults [...] Example: a drug used for family planning is to be discontinued. This may be accomplished by privately withdrawing it and replacing it with an alternative (in adult society). But instead the minister responsible takes advantage to gain cheap publicity by proclaiming yet another racist plot and in the process doing maximum damage to both family planning and race relations. For Heaven's sake, why?28 Only a person not concerned with the welfare of his patients would [...] concentrate on stopping babies only. Indeed the vast majority on whom Depo-Provera is used are black. Could it be that black babies must be stopped irrespective of the risk? I am pleased that the controversy has come to light and the government has saved the women of Zimbabwe.s?

These different framings of the Depo-Provera issues were the products of a specific point in Zimbabwean history, the first moment of the postcolonial era. Each racially defined 'side' perceived itself as the victim of the other: Africans pointing to the experiences of the past under white domination, and whites interpreting the present (and their expectations of the near future) as one in which they would suffer under a zealous new black government. Both sides were speaking out of their perceptions of an inequitable power relationship in which their side was maligned and abused by the other. However, as I demonstrate below, the debate over Depo cannot be reduced to simply racial antagonism. Within white and African communities, as well as in the contested conceptual spaces between those communities, the use of Depo for African women was a highly politicized issue.

27 P. Zvombo, "Depo-Provera is a relic of colonialism," letter to The Herald (10 August 1981). 28 "X Matter," "Claim of plots causes damage," letter to Sunday Mail (26 July 1981). 29 "Concerned," "Welcome article on birth drug," letter to Bulawayo Chronicle (10 July 1981).

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Family planning debates in Parliament Opposition to new methods of fertility control and suspicion of white motives for introducing it had been part of nationalist political culture for decades before the liberation war. As early as 1957, at a time when dissemination of birth control had not yet diffused outside the circles of elite white women, the Bulawayo branch of the early nationalist organization, the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC), passed resolutions against any kind of birth control sponsored by the white regime. This followed a visit to Bulawayo by Edith Gates of the Pathfinder Fund , an American organization devoted to the global promotion of contraception. These resolutions, coming nearly ten years before the white government made its first inroads into family planning promotion , foreshadowed later nationalist criticism . The Bulawayo SRANC 's resolution stated that "birth control among the African people [is] [...] ungodl y and unChristian, fighting against the laws of nature. The Congress views this with great suspicion in that there is a political motive behind the scheme of birth control.v'" The white regime was accused of "trying to destock human beings as they were doing with African cattle" under agricultural "modernization" schemes in force at the time. Five years later, the nationalist leader Joshua Nkomo (later the leader of the Zimbabwean African People's Union) fulminated that family planning was a form of genocide, and threatened to bum down any government clinic that dispensed it to African women" Even Africans who worked with in regime structures, such as African MPs, could be roused by the subject of birth control. This was demonstrated year after year during parl iamentary debates on the health budget, which regularly included a grant for the FPAR, with the reiteration of variations on the themes of white fear, of an increase in the numbers of black bodies, and of black fears of white genocidal tendencies. White parliamentarians expressed these fears in the form of concerns over the economic implications of the growth in the African population, insisting that use of family planning was a necessary technical measure to ensure development, modernization and progress for Rhodesia as a multi-racial nation:

30 "Congress says birth control is ungodly," African Daily News (2 December 1957). See also from African Daily News, "Bulawayo opinion varied on family planning" (19 November 1957); "Family planning" [Editorial] (20 November, 1957); "Government is not concerned," (2 December 1957; " Highfield trading" (3 December 1957); " Birth control again" [Editorial] (4 December 1957); "Women not opposed to birth control" (9 December 1957). 3 \ West, "Family Planning," 14.

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Do they not realise that they, the Africans, will be far better off as a family unit if they restrict the numbers of their children to those that they can afford to have and not to throw into the world parasitic members of the commun ity who will always be a 100 per eent burden on both the family and the economyvv The greatest problem facing Rhodesia today is not the form its future government will take, or who is going to govern the country, it is going to be the disastrous programme of how this country by the end of the century will be able to cope with and care for its population. We will not have the financial means, the natural resources, nor the food to look after our children [...] if we do not do something about it, this country, without any shadow of a doubt, is facing absolute disaster."

These sorts of speeches, referring to an African population explosion, were often an obstacle to the best efforts of African family-planning fieldworkers when they tried to explain that, in their opinion, family planning was a benign project for the health of the whole family. As one former family-planning worker recalled: The thing that was hammering us was that there were some whites who could talk in Parliament that "Oh, these Africans are too many." In Parliament! "These Africans are so many, they don't even know what family planning is." That was going to be a barrier for us. Some educated people in the rural areas, they knew. They said, "You are talking of this [pointing to a FPAR pamphlet about the happiness brought by planned families] but why are you also saying that [referring to the alleged African population explosion]?" They said, "Ah no, people, there is something behind this." We tried our level best to make them understand that, "Of course they might be saying that we are too many, but the problems [of having a family too large for one's means] are still yours. It is you that is facing those problems, no matter what is said in Parliament you are still going to be having those problems."34

In Parliament, African members responded to the 'population explosion' speeches with allegations that the development and modernization rhetoric of the Rhodesian Front masked a secret agenda for cutting down African numbers and undermining the moral fibre of African women . These issues reached a peak of vehemence on 9 March 1966, when a white member had introduced a motion "that the house supports the promotion of a national campaign to encourage family planning":35

32 Mr Owen-Smith, Parliamentary Debates (5 September 1967): col. 41. 33 Minister of Health, Parliamentary Debates (30 September 1977): col. 394 . 34 Interview with Mr James Doro. 35 Mr Owen-Smith, Parliamentary Debates (9 March 1966): col. 1467. The motion was never voted on, as Owen-Smith, a vociferous fan of family planning for Africans, withdrew it after he

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Exterminating us, is that the idea?36 I am completely opposed to the terms of the motion [...] The European wants birth control because [...] they are anxious to reduce the populat ion ratios between black and white. This is to make it easier to control the African . This motion is aimed at the African generally, with the result that the African should not swamp the European by sheer weight of numbers. This motion could not have been aimed at the Europeans whose birth rate is alread y about two and a half children per family, and the Government is entic ing as many Europeans as possible to come here . No wonder the Europeans have been referred to as a dying race.' ? For the information of this house , this motion gives ammunition to people who have been against the Rhodesian Front government and they say we are trying to create a sort of human destocking [...] I would like to tell the House that the interpretations Africans are giving to this motion are too [very] serious. They say it is not at all in the national intere st of the people of Rhodesia but it has a political motive behind it. [...] Th is motion is against the command of God and is also against African customs and African will. As far as this motion is concerned, it is a racial motion. [...] The Europeans are trying to get rid of the African population." It seems the mover is afraid of this "one man one vote" ; he can be swallowed up by

the Africans and it will take years for him to number [outnumber] them .' ? Mr Owen -Smith: I would submit that until the status of the African women in this country is raised there can never be any true or appreciable raising of standards or advancement of the African population as a whole - [An Honourable Member: Lip service] - If the African family were limited to a reasonab le size - [Mr Majongwe: What is reason able ?] - the wife, instead of being a perpetual slave to continual pregnancies year after year - [An Honourable Member: How untrue] - would have the opportunity to improve herself, she would have a chance to improve the whole environmental background of the home [Honourable Members: inaudible interjections] She could be someone that the African husband could be proud of instead of being in

judged that it had stimulated debate adequately. The vehemence which the subject evoked was remarked on by the Minister of Health, in a rather inopportune turn of phrase, as being "pregnant with undesirable features , characterized by an amount of ignorance, bigotry, prejudice and naked racialism that I have never witnessed before in my eight years in this House" ; Parliamentary Debates (20 April 1966): col. 1903. 36 Mr Majongwe, Parliamentary Debates (9 March 1966): col. 1473. 37 Mr Mhlanga , Parliamentary Debates (9 March 1966): cols. 1489-90. 38 Mr Makaya, Parliamentary Debates (9 March 1966): col. 1496. Mr Makaya went on to compare the intentions behind the motion with Hitler 's extermination of the Jews. 39 Mr Samuriwo, Parliamentary Debates (20 April 1966) [continuation of debate from 9 March 1966]: col. 1893.

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her present state of almost chattel-like subservience [An Honourable Member: Utter nonsense] - [Mr Samuriwo: We are proud of our wives] - [Mr Chigogo: That is utter nonsense] - [Mr Chipunza: You stink of colour bar] - [Honourable Members: naudible interjections].40 Mr Alexander: I do not think enough emphasis has been put on the part that women have to play in this matter. I think the honourable members opposite here are in for a rude awakening because it is their women and their women alone who are going to force them to do something about this [family planning] - [Mr Behane: Are you going to tell my wife what to do?] - [...] If the honourable members here do not take heed of what I am saying they will have to take heed from their women in a very short time - [Mr Behane: Are you going to tell our women what to do?] -- [Mr Hlabangana: How do you know so much about our women"]."

Dissent among whites over family planning Throughout the 1960s and I 970s, internal contradictions grew among different factions ofthe white establishment, even within the Rhodesian Front (RF), with respect to promoting family planning among Africans. Tension between those white government official s who supported the intensive promotion of family planning and those who did not hampered the spread of information and technology. On the one hand, the RF faced pressures from its members to do something about Africa's overpopulation, increasingly viewed by the white population as a security threat. As the nationalist liberation struggle accelerated towards becoming a 'shooting war, ' white anxieties about the African political threat were displaced onto a perceived African demographic threat. This concern was manifested both at the highest policy-making levels of the RF - as when rumours circulated that a "comprehensive plan to combat the population explosion" had been agreed on by cabinet ministers in a confidential session at a RF congress'? - and at the party grass-roots, as illustrated by this letter from the secretary of the Sabi Valley branch of the RF : This branch is most distressed with the present population explosion and appreciates that your department is doing all it can with regard to family planning. It appears however that the average African is not at all perturbed with the situation and shows no interest in family planning. In fact we would go further and say that they are using the population explosion as a weapon against the future of the European in this

40

Parliamentary Debates (9 March 1966): cols. 1469-70.

41

Parliamentary Debates (9 March 1966): cols. 1499-1500.

42

"Plan details, please," The Rhodesia Herald (25 September 1973).

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country. We are most anxious to know whether your department has any further plans in mind for alleviat ing the situation and if so would be grateful if you could give us some idea of what you have in mind. We as a branch of the Rhodesian Front are eager to help your department in any way possible."

The administration of the FPAR often found itself in an uncomfortable alliance with the more militantly segregationist elements within the RF. Containing the enthusiasm of RF backbenchers and their allies for reducing the African population explosion was one of the FPAR's most difficult public relations tasks . Peter Dodds , the director, could not afford to alienate the RF members on whose goodwill the continued existence of his organization depended , yet at the same time he had to avoid having his work identified with the more overtly racist utterances of the white elite. This necessitated insinuating a series of damage-control exercises into the media, as Dodds insisted to the white and black public that his work was not politically motivated and was not part of the RF's political agenda, whatever individual politicians, both black and white, might say.44 In interviews, former white administrators and board members of the FPAR expressed great annoyance with "irresponsible" statements by their erstwhile white allies on the need to rebalance racial ratios in the country and bring in more white immigrants. Statements by white MPs in support of family planning for Africans, when publicized among educated Africans, were said to have done as much harm to the cause of birth control as the overt hostility of the liberation forces.P impress on our population the dangers of uncontrolled and irresponsible proliferation . Population can be controlled and it must bc. If it is not done voluntarily then I can envisage the time that it may have to be done by regulation."

This brought an immediate response from Dodds, who stated the next day that "compulsion can play no part in Rhodesia 's birth control programme.v'" 43 NAZ B/137/5 - Family Planning Policy, vol. 1, letter to Mark Webster, Secretary for Health (24 September 1973). The Sabi Valley branch received in reply a bland statement that the Ministry of Health thanked them for their interest in national affairs, and was very interested in promoting the health of all Rhodesian s. 44 For example , " Plea to keep politics out of family planning," The Herald (1 January 1974); " Planned parenthood and popular fallacies," The Herald (2 October 1973); 'T ime to get rid of birth [control] bogeys," The Herald (21 August 1975); and "Birth control claims dismissed as untrue," The Herald (2 July 1977). 45 Interviews with Peter Dodds, Dr Esther Sapire (former medical director of the FPAR) and Dr Timothy Stamps (former medical director of the city of Salisbury, and Minister of Health in 1997).

46

"Compulsory birth control hint for Rhodesia," Rhodesia Herald (18 May 1976).

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The Bann ing of Dep o-Prover a in Zimbabwe 1981 There are man y thousands of African women [in Mashonaland] who are willing and anxious to accept family plannin g advice but are unable to obtain it. Many government hospitals not only do no active family planning, they do not even discuss fam ily plannin g with the patients nor are they able to tell them where to obtain advi ce. We do talk to nurses and nursing sisters but they seem not to be interested . [. ..)1 am offered the film ' Road to Health' [an FPAR-produced pro-famil y plannin g film) [...] when I advised that it should be given to the Ministry of Information to be show n on their film units [which toured the country presentin g educational films on a variety of subjects ] I was informed that they will not show it because it contains inform ation about family planning . If the head of the Ministry of Informati on was the Pope in Rome , he could not be more implacably opposed to the dissem ination of informat ion about family planning . If we had sufficient staff and the backin g of a good information not propaganda service, we could have thousands of African women on a three monthl y routine of Depo Provera and make a real impact on the soaring birth rate, what we are doing now is a drop in the ocean."

Dr Pugh, the Provin cial Medical Officer of Health for Matabeleland and a strong support er of the FPAR , reported the same problems in his comer of the count ry: It has been disappointin g that the Ministry of Information has been too terrified of

the subjec t to allow their mobile cinema units to show family planning films or to use family plann ing articles in the Af rican Times [the broadsheet for Africans produced by Internal Affairs]."? I understand that you take the view that perhaps the presence of famil y plannin g

peopl e may keep women away from the clini c. I cannot accept this view and I should be grateful if you would in future see your way to collaborating with the family planning personnel.w

Webster took a similarly hard line with clinics run by Catholic missionar ies who did not wish to permit family planning in their clinics , telling them that the continuation of their government grant dependent on their falling into line. There was to be no more financial support for Catholic clinics that did not "fully cooperate" with the Min istry of Health 's agenda for family planning.v' " Birth control must be voluntary," Rhodesia Herald (19 May 1976). NAZ FIl 18/3, Mashonaland Reports, vol. 1, letter to the Secretary for Health (13 August 1971). 47

48

NAZ B/137/5 - Family Planning Policy, vol. 3, letter to Mark Webster (18 September 1972). NAZ B/137/5 - Family Planning Policy, vol. 3, letter (26 July 1973). 5\ NAZ B/ 137/5 - Family Planning Policy, vol. 3, letter from Webster to the Secretary of the Archdiocese of Salisbury, 19 September 1973. I have been unable to discover whether the Ministry 49

50

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Race ratios and cutting down Africans: nationalist opposition to population control On the African side, opposition to family planning as a political tool of the white government for reducing the African population was tempered by private interest in, and use of, family planning by many of the freedom fighters and their supporters. On the population front, the settler regime is carrying out campaigns among Zimbabweans , scaring them by tales of fatal diseases and poverty for large families [...] Chiefs in the rural areas are being ordered by the regime to bring forward cooperating agents to be used to circulate in their respective areas, preaching the doom of large families [...] Every clinic has an office to advise every mother on family planning and offering sterilising injections to be applied without the knowledge of the husband [...] The settlers are engaged in a population war against the Zimbabweans. They see the power of the Zimbabwean population and the armed struggle ending their dreams of a permanent paradise [...] One of the urgent needs of Zimbabwe is a greater rate of population necessitated [...] by the dictates of the armed liberation struggle. [...] Next to the insecurity the enemy feels from the gutting redhot barrels of guns is the preponderantly engulfing population increase of the Zimbabweans.v

According to the other major liberation force, the Zimbabwe African National Union, 'the illegal regime dreads a population as well as a political explosion [...J WE WANT BOTH EXPLOSIONS FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRy.,,53 The political argument [against family planning] came with the war [...] this is when the topic really came up I remember one such address [by a political commisar at a meeting in a rural area] [...] Well, the issue here was the land, the whole fight was about the land [...] any idea which could be used in order to recover the land would come in. "We are fighting for the land, the land is ours, but our land has been taken . And now you people are accepting ideas of limiting the number of your children! When the country is so full of other people and not you yourselves, you should have children . We have plenty of ground for children to be in, and yet you are being told to limit the number of your children. These people [whites] want us to be few so they can fight us and take us [...] if we are few the majority [whites] will take over, as they have already taken over the greater areas, the land, the farms, and we own very little

ever carried through on this threat and cut off funds to Catholic clinics which did not encourage family planning. 52 Zimbabwe Review (October 1973): II. 53 Zimbabwe News (July 1970): 10; cited in West, "Nationalism, Race and Gender," 23.

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even in the poor areas. And you are limiting the number of children! There is no need to control the children.">'

Other FPAR fieldworkers reported attending pungwes (all-night political meetings) at which it transpired that family planning "was a big weapon of the politicians, they were all saying 'No family planning!' 'Pasi nokuronga mhuri!'" 55 and the importance of women bearing more children to replace the men and women killed in the war was stressed. Some who worked in the white-controlled mining and farming regions around Chinhoyi and Bindura reported that strong persuasion , ifnot outright coercion, was used by white bosses to urge their employees and their employees ' wives to limit the number of their children . The political commissars of the liberation forces used these instances of white interference in Africans' domestic lives when they recounted to the people their grievances against colonialism. At least three African fieldworkers were killed by the liberation forces specifically because of their involvement with the new methods of family planning, and others reported instances of harassment such as being detained and questioned, being forced to eat their stock of pills, and having their rudimentary medical equipment thrown into rivers. [At pungwes] the boys would tell us - they would say that injections, that the DepoProvera was made to sterilize the women so that we Africans will be less than the whites, so the whites can be many and take all the land.56

However, Depo also played a role in a more subtle rhetorical strategy, that of establishing that the white regime was stripping Africans of their essential humanity, treating them as animals. Rumours proliferated that Depo was developed for use, or actually used on, feral animals in order to domesticate them: they say that the Depo was used in other countries to tame donkeys, and that message spread to people, this was the rumour, and now they are using it for our wives, and so we [family planning educators] have got a very difficult situation. [...] when it was denounced some people became very afraid, that was the reason, that Depo-Provera is not good to be used for human beings, it was just meant for the animals . Because they want to oppress us down they are bringing this to Africans. Depo is only for the Africans , not for the white pcople.>'

54 55 56

57

Interview with Mrs Winnet Togarepi. Interview with Mrs Vimbai Tasekwa. Interview with Mrs Rosah Hamadziripi. Interview with Mr Moffat Chitiyo.

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The idea that Depo was a way of dehumanizing Africans, or an insult to the essential nature of African people, had a very specific gendered component to it. Many of my interviewees told me of persistent rumours that a man who had sexual contact with a woman who had used Depo would become sick and weak. At first I took this 'sickness ' to be a form of the non-specific abdominal ailments which are said to afflict people who transgress moral or social codes, especially in sexual matters, in Shona communities. However, I was enlightened by Mrs Gladys Chitsungo, a former fieldworker, that this sickness was actually impotence .f That was a belief to men, they thought they would be weak [.. . Their wives] were told by them, "Now you are going to make me weak [if you use family planning] , you are killing me like witchcraft." It was very much said by the men. [...] (AK: They believed if the wife was taking family planning the husband can get sick?) Not sick. He doesn't get sick exactly, he will not be strong to meet [have sex with] the wife. (Makes limp-wrist gesture of flaccidity). They say that the man will not feel like making intercourse with the wife, he won't be able to. (Laughs). As it was during the wartime, people were really afraid, they didn't know which was which. They thought it was a way of decreasing the tribe of Africans, they thought all of that was going to come to men if women took pills, men would be weak so they could not do intercourse, they could not make any more babies.>? Just like the digging of contour ridges and dipping of cattle [other practices promoted by the white authorities which were opposed by the guerrillas], such talk about family planning was there and regarded as a western way of reducing the number of blacks so that we have fewer children and they come and take over the land and eventually the land is taken ... So all these things, these developmental issues that would do down the enemy would be advanced . During the war you use any available propaganda. It's a question of what ideas people will buy and you advance them.v"

FPWs reported that the younger and more militant comrades were the ones who most strongly opposed contraceptives on ideological grounds, as a Western perversion. Older and more seasoned comrades, especially those who had been trained outside the country in socialist-bloc countries which had their own contraceptive 58 According to my interviewees, infertility, impotence and menstrual disruption are also common signs that a person has been cursed or bewitched by an enemy or a jealous acquaintance. 59 Interview with Mrs Gladys Chitsungo. Throughout the interview, Mrs Chitsungo used "taking pills" interchangeably with " family planning": like other interviewees, she appeared to believe that the Depo injection was another way of administering the same substance as was administered orally in the pills. I believe that her comments apply to all forms of hormonal contraception. 60 Interview with Mrs Winnet Togarepi.

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pro grammes, such as Cuba, would sometimes acknowledge in private that that the y believed contraceptives could be separated from the political context of colonialism in which the y were proffered and that contraceptives could , and would, be poli ticall y rede fined in an independent Zimbabwe as part of self-determination and developm ent. The politicians, they were going around mobili sing people so that people knew about it [reasons why contraceptives were bad], they were aware [...] They were tellin g us that it' s the way of decreasing the Africans. If you could find an old man who is a politician, he would tell you that this is beeause we are still fighting, we haven 't got our independence yet, but after we win we will want these things. If you talk to them privately, they can say that. Those were the old politicians. The young men were all exc ited [...] [but] they [the older polit icians] would tell you be strong [ie, don 't give up on family plannin g] because tomorrow we will also want to have this family plannin g."! The comrades j ust said "Carry on [with your j ob]. There is no gove rnment that doesn 't like famil y planning , when we are the government we will want it."62 [The comrades] did under stand [about the value of family plannin g] but of course politically [...] they were saying no. They wo uld say it publicly, they could say family plann ing is another way to destroy us [...]. ju st the same as what they would do with that FN [rifle] of the Smit h people [i.e., the regime's soldiers), they would say that it has got no bullets. They would say that, they would say this AK [rifle, used by the comrades] is the only gun which has got bullets [...] they ju st say it because of the situatio n. Not that they actually hate family plann ing, they were ju st making propaganda.sI was a politician myself. During my school days I was one of the youth for Dr Nko mo in Highfield [...] So most of the politicians were my friends and I could understand them. One funny thing was that durin g the Rhodesian time some of the things they wanted they didn't want other people to accept. The reason being that when you meet them they could resist in the presence of many but if you meet them privat ely they say, " Yes, I do this [use famil y plann ing] but I don 't want the others to know." You get to some prominent people, very top people , and they say, "I am using but I don 't want others to know, this is my secret.'>'

61 Interview with Mrs Gladys Chitsungo. 62 Interview with Mrs Eustinah Muchoko. 63 Interv iew with Mr Jonas Chakanyuka. 64

Interview with Mr Thompson Tinoenda.

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It is difficult to gauge the extent to which the comrades themselves used the new family-planning methods . Only two FPWs reported that they had regular contact

with (female) comrades seeking pills or Depo injections, although two others claimed that they saw the comrades' medical officers carrying pills. Many FPWs reported that they supplied condoms to the comrades. Being a male-controlled method, however, condoms did not carry the same political loading as the femalecontrolled pill and the Depo injection, with their connotations of gender subversion. Yet when FPWs met the comrades by chance in the course of their work, the guerrillas were more likely to request money or minor medical supplies or to destroy the stocks of pills and injections that they found than to make any requests for contraceptive assistance. The one former comrade to whom I spoke asserted that all of her colleagues were opposed to the new contraceptives. Not the first groups, and not often . The last groups of comrades were given some pills , and they gave them to their girlfriends privately when we elders had gone home from the rneetings.sWe had no family planning lectures, but we heard our sons and daughters saying that the last group of comrades from Mozambique gave their lovers injections and pills. To us elders, they encouraged us to have children.w They said nothing about family planning, but to their assistants and the girls they gave pills privately. They did this privately, we only heard it from the girls.s? ZANLA had difficulty deciding how far to intervene in African customs. It did not

go very far : it decided not to introduce family planning in the camps and [...] informed those young couples whose marriages the party registered that their parents would eventually be informed [in ease they should want] lobola payments and other traditional rites .68

A young guerrilla in the camps, Tainie Mundondo, reported that '[n]aturally men and women fell in love. If they wanted to stay together, they reported this and were registered. Family planning was not possible.v'" The war situation added to the cultural and moral objections to contraception. "It would have been wrong to have

65

Interview with a man in Buhera.

66

Interview with a man, Madya kraal , Wedza.

67

Interview with a woman, Madya kraal (wife of the man cited above) .

Norma Kriger, Zimbabwe's Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992) : 193. 68

69

Kriger, Zimbabwe's Guerrilla War, 193.

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birth control when so many people were dying."?" By 1978 over 15,000 people, overwhelmingly rural Africans, had been killed in the war, and the liberal Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace estimated that a hundred were dying every day.?' Nonetheless, women guerrillas had their own strong reasons and desires to use birth control. Even Mundondo acknowledged that "pregnant women had a tough time.'>72 Guerrillas who were pregnant were sent to the rear in Mozambique, usually to the ' maternity camp' at Ossibissa, for three and a half months, as a kind of maternity leave . After the baby was born, he or she was placed in a communal nursery and the mother was usuall y re-assigned to support work. It was very difficult to get back to the front after becoming a mother.i! Consequently, many women did not want to get pregnant.?" Although she was opposed to the use of non-traditional contraceptives, Zvobgo acknowledges : "of course I talked to the girls privately and told them to look after themselves and how best to do it. But there was no policy about family planning.?" Zvobgo evidently did not see anything wrong in avoiding birth by "looking after oneself," so it appears to be the use of pills and injections (ie modern contraceptive methods) that was objectionable. A statement by Mrs Sally Mugabe, wife of the Patriotic Front leader Robert Mugabe, suggests that the comrades' objection to family planning was based on the idea that it threatened the war effort rather than being an intrinsic objection to fertility control. At a London meeting in 1981, she said: "[family planning] was not a subject considered or discussed during the liberation war - when the numbers of supporters were being seriously depleted, it was necessary to produce more cadres to take the place of the fallen com rades. " She herself was interested in family planning as a means of spacing out children so that they could benefit from the available resources, but did not support the indiscriminate use of contraceptives and lowering the birth rate .76

70

Kriger , Zimbabwe's Guerrilla War, 193.

John Gilmurray, Roger Riddell & David Sanders, The Struggle for Health: From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, vol. 7 (Salisbury: Mambo , 1979): 3 I. 71

72

Weiss, Women, 90.

73

Miranda Davies, Third World: Second Sex (London : Zed, 1987): 104-105.

74 Lyons , Guns and Guerrilla Girls; Josephine Nhongo-Simbanegavi, "Zimbabwean Women in the Liberation Struggle: ZANLA and its Legacy 1972-1985" (unpubli shed doctoral dissertation, Oxford University, 1997). 75 We iss, Women, 94. "Looking after oneself' may possibly be a reference to traditional method s of contraception, such as the rhythm method or coitus interruptus . 76

" Women' s struggle for liberation," West Africa (\98 I) : 1531-32.

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Yet despite the apparent ban on contraception, the testimonies of many women guerrillas tell a different story about what happened in practice. Like the rural women, they were willing to contravene officially sanctioned norms and values in order to enhance their own lives: We had access to contraceptives in the bush. People brought them back from overseas and I'm glad, reaIly I wouldn't have liked to have had a baby in the bush. We have adopted what we want from western culture into our revolution, and we are aware of the fact that people have sexual feelings in spite of the dangers of the struggle [...] Our attitude to contraception and abortion changed during the years of the struggle. The girls have reaIly adopted a new way of living,"?

For at least some women, their own interests prevailed over the norms that opposed contraception, and this could lead them into gender-based conflict: "Some of the male comrades did not like contraceptives because they thought they were murder, but really it was our duty and we female comrades were ready to defend it.,,78

Women's preference for Depo From the information I have presented so far, it would be easy to see the struggle over Depo-Provera which culminated in its banning as a contest between different

groups of men - white settlers, who sought to control African fertility, and Zimbabwean nationalists, who did not want this power in white hands. However, such an image of this struggle would obviously be incomplete, because it omits the representation ofthe interests of the women whose bodies were the terrain of this struggle. Finding the voices of the women who received Depo-Provera is very difficult. Because African women in the settler period were structurally excluded from channels of voicing their needs and wants, due to gendered patterns of schooling, literacy and political representation, I have to try and reconstruct their interests in DepoProvera in two ways: indirectly from the testimony of men and of those women who were professionally involved in family planning; and directly from the memories of men and women of the days when these new technologies were being brought into their communities.

77 78

"Nyasha," quoted in Davies, Third World, 105. Female combatant, quoted in Kriger, Guerrilla War, 139.

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They were happy, espec ially the women, because they liked the inject ion [because] you can just have it private, like I did . .. the injection is for me and that's all [i.e. no one else in the family will know about itJ.79 Women [liked the new methods] but not men . Men like children, no matter [if they are as many as] fifteen as long as he call s them his, but women know the problem of labour pains and raising children so they do it privately.'" I can say women [were happy] because the men want children but they were not able to look after them properly. Some beat their wives no matter if she was pregnant, so they were happy to have secret prevention. Our tradition [traditional ways of preventing conception, such as drinking infusions of herbs] is perfect, but some ... [you have to] drink [a cup of medicine] everyday, and you can 't hide a cup of medicine every day, so injections are better.t! [Women] like the modern methods becau se it was so easy to hide and secretive to men . Traditional methods, you have to consult someone and so there was a lot of gossip . Men like children, but some women don 't want to have so many children.v

In 1981, shortly after the banning of Depo-Provera, further evidence of the popularity of the drug among women was provided in a current-affairs television show, Focus, which included discussion of contraception . According to a report on the show in the Zimbabwean news magazine Mota, A woman in the audience lament ed the phasing out of Depo , claiming that many black wives had preferred it to other forms . The reason, she said , was to avoid being found out by hu sbands as most black hu sbands did not approve of th eir wives

practising birth control .v

'The problem of husbands' In all of my interviews with forty-eight former fieldworkers, interviewees talked about the "private acceptor issue." The majority of them described this issue, often referred to as "the problem of men" or "the problem with husbands," as the biggest

79 Interview with woman , Chifamba kraal, Buhera . The quotations in this section are all derived from interview notes and translations by Mrs Nyaradzo Shayanewako.

RO

Interview with man , Madya kraal, Buhera ,

81

Interview with woman , Chibwe kraal, Wedza .

82

Interview with woman, Jekanyika kraal, Wedza.

83

"Contraceptives: people concerned," Moto (22 August 1981).

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challenge they faced in spreading the gospel of new methods of family planning ." They identified three sources of male resistance to family planning: men who wanted more children for instrumental purposes, such as more hands to work in fields or as status symbols; men who believed that protection from pregnancy would lead their wives into sexual liaisons with other men;85 and men who resented pills and injections being given directly to their wives without first being screened by men as the guardians of the interaction between the family unit and the outside world. 86 Those interviewees who did not see "men" as their greatest problem said that the biggest problem was "politics." However, I would argue that "politics" in the context offamily planning had a great deal to do with men and women, and with what men considered the proper relations between the genders. Some of the women were divorced by their husbands in the 1970s when women started to use injections. Our African men want children, so at that time we had to hide pills, but we go for injections because they were so private and easier to use than pills, because he will try to find out [find the pills where they are hidden] one day [...] Some they are still hiding their pills but they end up [get caught or found out]; their husbands get other wives. We are still fighting the war of understanding [between husband and wife] if we are talking in terms offamily planning.s?

Fieldworkers, both male and female, reported that they regularly colluded with such women in their deception through such means as scheduling their familyplanning visits at the same time as well-baby clinics, giving women an acceptable excuse to visit the mobile clinics; or through providing women with false clinic referral slips stating that the women needed to visit the clinic for high blood pressure or other treatments, so that women could get permission from their husbands to go. In interviews, fieldworkers enthusiastically expounded on the tactics they used to circumvent male opposition. In other words, husbands and fathers had good reason to suspect that the new means of family planning being diffused through the struc-

84 Those who didn't describe "men" as their greatest problem said that the biggest problem was "politics." However, as I argue here, I believe that "politics" in the context of family planning had a great deal to do with men and women, and with what men considered the proper relations between the genders. 85 In the words of Mrs Tariro Tafireyi, a former fieIdworker, the provision on Depo or other means of family planning was "a certificate to do whatever she wanted without the husband's consent." All former FPAR fieldworkers cited in this essay are referred to by pseudonyms. 86 See Kaler, '" Who Has Told You' ," for a more detailed discussion of these reasons. 87 Interview notes and translation by Mrs Nyaradzo Shaynewako.

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tures of the FPAR were a threat to their authority. The use of Depo was not only a conspiracy of women against men, since male fieldworkers also supported women's secret use of the drug . One male field worker said : Women definitely, young women they used not to have problems [objections] to family planing. They liked family planning [...] She is concerned of her health, repeating of pregnancies ruins her life, so she is afraid for herself. This is the reason why she goes to the clinic and she tells the clinic staff, "I have come here but my husband is against it, my mother-in-law is against it, so please keep my card [prescription] here in the clinic." So it was very confidential to the nursing staff because we wanted to help the people that needed help. [AK: So you thought that was all right?] Yes, it was all right. [AK: Even though the woman might be deceiving her husband?] Yes, it was all right. 88

In providing Depo secretly to Zimbabwean women, a whole set of forces was arrayed against the patriarchal authority of the husbands . Former fieldworkers talked often about the collaboration of medical personnel, including nurses and doctors, in keeping the secrets of their clients . As most of the personnel trained in Western medicine that ordinary Zimbabweans would have had contact with were attached to government- or local-council-funded clinics, mission hospitals or other white institutions, the assistance of medical personnel in both providing and keeping the secret of Depo-Provera mean that the forces of chirungu, the devices and institutions of the white settlers, were allied with "insubordinate" women in deceiving men. Cooperation by medical personnel was particularly necessary in managing the side-effects of Depo, particularly menstrual disturbances, whether cessation of menses or excessive bleeding . As time went on, fieldworkers reported that men learned from educational talks and lectures about this particular side-effect of Depo, and would become suspicious or accuse their wives of contracepting secretly if they observed that the women were not menstruating as regularly as they used to : We had Depo, it was a private method. And some of the woman, as you know with Depo sometimes you have your menses and sometimes you won't , some could just say, "I have pretended to have my periods, after three days I have finished and then we start meeting [having sex] again, because he [the husband] is going to ask me,

88

Interview with former F PAR fieldworker, Mr Moffat Chitiyo.

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AMY KALER

"Why are you not having your menses"," because you know they were talking sometimes in the bars [male educators visited bars and other places where men congregated to extol the virtues of new methods of family planning], and the educators like Mr [X] were explaining also to them, then the man if he sees that the wife is not having periods he might be suspicious that "I think my wife is using this Depo," because he might have heard from his friends in the bar or in lectures.s? [AK: Were the men talking about family planning with each other?] Yes, yes, they definitely do. They say when you find a woman not having menses sometimes she is on injection. That's when they take their wives to doctors to find out why she is not menstruating [...] The men were getting suspicious definitely?"

Doctors and nurses at government and mission hospitals colluded in keeping the use of Depo a secret from men. One former fieldworker explained: the doctors were all motivated. They knew what to say in a case when such problems come up, they would just say there is nothing. The husband says, "Maybe she is going for some things [which] I don't know [about]," and the doctor would say there is no evidence of Depo [i.e., the doctor would lie to conceal the use of Depoj. The doctors were all informed[ ...]. When we hear of such [husbands who objected to their wives ' use of Depo] we make it known to doctors, then doctors will tell other doctors that if anybody complains about this you must know that this is what is going on and don 't say anything to the husband if they start complainin g. We were all cooperating."!

The demand for Depo after 1981 The importance of Depo to Zimbabwean women's reproductive strategies is shown by reports of a decline in numbers of contraception users after Depo was banned. A report of a 1983 conference noted that "It has been found that women who stopped using it [Depo ...] have had no motivation to use other methods,"92 and, as late as 1992, the Minister of Health reported "persistent requests" from Zimbabwean women for the return of Depo." Women did not switch their loyalties easily to another form of contraception. Clearly there were important advantages which were

89 90 91

92

93

Interview with former FPAR fieldworkcr, Mrs Nancy Gumbo. Interview with former FPAR fieldworker, Mrs Florence Ndaneta. Interview with Mrs Florence Ndaneta. "Child spacing under the spotlight," The Herald (27 May 1993). "The pill women fear may cause infertility," The Herald (10 June 1992).

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unique to Depo . The enduring demand for it in Zimbabwe was shown by the lively trade in the I980s in smuggling vials of Depo from South Africa, where it was not banned . This unregulated cross-border trade resulted in health complications for many women who took the smuggled Depo without medical supervision, since women with pre-existing conditions such as high blood pressure were not warned of the negative effects of using Depo, and since many of the vials of Depo were expired, damaged or injected in unsanitary conditions, leading to infection. There was a time when Depo was phased out [...]it was taken as a political issue and it was decided that it should be abolished . [AK: What happened to the women who had been using Depo?] We had to remotivate them to go and take oral contracept ives. Some defaulted [stopped using any form of contraceptives]. Some clever ones, some dealers used to go outside the country to South Africa, they buy some vials and being them back and sell them without any prescription . And when you are given Depo by someone who is not qualified, some went through difficult health problems. So they went to the health centres reporting that they were having problems because of this Depo. That's where we found those clients who were still wanting Depo although it was banned. A lot of those mothers were still interested in Depo. So it was found there was a big demand so it was introduced again.

According to a colleague, when she was doing her rounds as a family-planning distributor after the banning of Depo, telling her clients that they could no longer have their injection: [...] we could find them complain ing, "Why did you ban our injection?" So we could say, "No , times change, it will come back." Now [post-1992, when the ban on Depo was rescinded] we are saying "It's back!"

Depo and racism around the world ZANU's decision to ban Depo was also the product of global political dynamics. Attention to these dynamics helps to answer the question of why Depo was singled out among contraceptive methods for banning, although the contraceptive pill and the IUD were arguably as dangerous to women's health.t" During the 1970s and early 1980s, the Depo injection and other forms of unsafe contraception were syrn-

94 Jenny Lindsay, "The Politics of Population Control in Namibia," in Women and Health in Africa, ed. Meredith Turshen (Trenton NJ: Africa World Press, 1991): 164.

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bois of the asymmetry of global power relationships, with the reproductive systems of women standing in for the poor and oppressed of the world. International controversy over Depo was preceded by American dumping of the Dalkon Shield and the high-oestrogen pill. In addition , the history of Depo-Provera contains a specifically racial component. For much of the 1970s, Depo was a drug inflicted by white men on brown and black women.

The rehabilitation of Depo-Provera This was the situation of Depo-Provera in the 1970s and 1980s. But in 1992, when the fiery anti-imperialism of the immediate post-revolutionary situation in Zimbabwe had had more than ten years to cool, a remarkable about-face took place and Depo was re-Iegalized for contraceptive purposes by the general female population." By this time, the control of African women's reproductive abilities was no longer a site of unresolved conflict between white and African men, and so, I believe, it became politically possible to 'rehabilitate' Depo-Provera. As discussed above, women's attachment to Depo had remained strong since its banning, and there was still no other contraceptive that combined Depo's advantages of affordability, discretion, effectiveness and convenience. By 1991, women's interests in having access to Depo were no longer overridden by nationalist opposition to white control, and the government thus found it possible to make concessions to women's desire for this contraceptive . The return of Depo followed acknowledgment by the Zimbabwe National Family Planning Council (ZNFPC) that the range of contraceptive choices offered in Zimbabwe was inadequate . Although the ZNFPC did not mention any non-medical reason why women might choose one method over another and did not address questions of gender relations in method choice, it did argue in its 1991 Five-Year Plan for the promotion of ' invisible' contraceptive methods such as the injection and the new Norplant subdermal implant, albeit without mentioning the specific advantages to women of these methods' invisibility. [F]amily planning in Zimbabwe is essentially a one-product programmeme . Oral contraceptives are highly effective but are not necessarily the best method for every woman . Pill users require constant resupply, a requirement that poses both logistic and financial constraints [...]. There are many categories of women for whom the pill is perhaps not the best method. The challenge to the family planning programme is to 95 Technically, Depo-Provera had never been completely outlawed as its use among some small medically defined subgroups, such as the mentally handicapped, was still legal.

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make a greater variety of methods available to the motivated user [...] Political concerns and medical policies currently restricting the use of some methods will be reviewed and modified as appropriate.w

Conclusion The 1981 Depo-Provera decision is located conceptually at the intersection of the ' politics of reproduction' and the politics of national liberation. One of the best reasons to study this particular decision is that it illuminates the entanglement of gender issues and national political issues lying at this juncture. In Zimbabwe, the decision to ban Depo-Provera was justified on the grounds that it was in the best interests of both women and the state, as it both protected women's health and threw off some of the remaining vestiges of colonialism. Depo genuinely did pose risks to women's health, especially when carelessly or unscrupulously promoted: the concern with health was not just an excuse trumped up by Ushewokunze for nationalist muscle-flexing . Yet, for many women, Depo had advantages which outweighed its health risks and its association with coercion and racism, as evinced by the great popularity that Depo enjoyed within the FPAR's programmes and the continued demand for it that eventually culminated in its rehabilitation . Women of Zimbabwe, by their expressed preferences and by their actions, contested Ushewokunze's assertion that banning Depo was in their best interests. The determination of where women's best interests lay was fraught with contradiction between official and grass-roots interpretations of what women needed for their own good.

WORKS CITED Anon. ["A Correspondent"]. "South Africa: Crimes against women ," Africa 170 (October 1985). Batezat, Elinor, & Margaret Mwalo. Women in Zimbabwe (SAPES : Harare, 1989). Bourdillon, Michael. The Shona People (Harare: Mambo, 1980). Brown, Barbara . "Facing the ' Black Peril' : The Politics of Population Control in South Africa," Journal ofSouthern African Studies 13.3 (1987): 256-73.

Castle, W.M. "The Extent of Family Planning Among Africans in Mashonaland ," Central African Journal ofMedicine (August 1976): 965--68.

96 Zimbabwe National Family Planning Council, Strategy for the Zimbabwe National Family Planning Programme 1991-/996 (Harare: ZNFPC , 1991): 7, 10.

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Chinemana, Frances . "Liberated Health in Zimbabwe? The Experience of Women 1981-1983," in

Wi>men s Health and Apartheid: The Health of Women and Children and the Future of Pro-

gressive Primary Health Care in Southern Africa, ed. Marcia Wright, Zena Stein & Jean Scandlyn (Frankfurt am Main: Medico International, 1989): 90-113. Clarke, D.G "Problems of family planning amongst Africans in Rhodesia ," Rhodesian Journal of

Economics 8 (1972) : 17-38. Davies, Miranda. Third World: Second Sex (London : Zed, 1987). Ehrenreich, Barbara , M. Dowie & Stephen Minkin. "The Charge: Genocide; The Accused: The United States Government," Mother Jones (November 1979): 26-37. Family Planning Association of Rhodesia. Annual Report 1977 (Salisbury : FPA R, 1978). Family Planning Association of Zimbabwe . Annual Report 1981 (Harare : FPAR , 1981). Feierman, Steven. "Struggles for Control : The Social Roots of Health and Healing in Modem Africa," African Studies Review 28 (1982) : 73-148. Gaidzanwa, Rudo. 1mages ofWomen in Zimbabwean Literature (Harare: College Press, 1985). Geraty, A. Evaluation of Family Planning Educational Programmes in Rhodesia (Salisbury : UniversityofRhodesia,1973). Gibney, L. "Contraceptive Practices in Zimbabwe : The Influence of Educational Attainment and Personal Relationships" (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, 1993). Gilmurray, John, Roger Riddell & David Sanders. The Struggle for Health: From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, vol. 7 (Salisbury : Mambo, 1979). Ginsburg , Faye, & Rayna Rapp. "The Politics of Reproduction ," Annual Review ofAnthropology 20 (1991) : 311-43 . Hartmann, Betsy. Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Birth Control (New York: Harper & Row, 1987). Jacobs , Susie M., & Tracey Howard. " Women in Zimbabwe : Stated Policy and State Actions," in

Women, State and Ideology, ed. Haleh Afshar (Binghamton NY: SUNY Press, 1987): 28-46. Kaler, Amy. "Fertility, Gender and War: the 'Culture of Contraception ' in Rhodesia 1957-1980" (doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1998). -

-. '" Who Has Told You To Do This Thing?' : Contraception as Subversion in Rhodesia 19701980" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, 1997).

s

Kriger, Norma. Zimbabwe Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices (Cambridge : Cambridge UP,1992). Lindsay, Jenny. "The Politics of Population Control in Namibia," in Women and Health in Africa , ed. Meredith Turshen (Trenton NJ: Africa World Press, 1991): 143--67. Lyons, Tanya. Guns and Guerrilla Girls: Women in the Zimbabwean National Liberation Struggle (Lawrenceville NJ : Africa World Press, forthcoming 200 I). Manga, P. "The Transformation of Zimbabwe 's Health Care System: A Review of the White Paper on Health," Social Science and Medicine 27.11 (1988) : 1131-38.

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The Banning ofDepo-Provera in Zimbabwe 1981

Mass, Bonnie . Population Target: The Political Economy ofPopulation Control in Latin America (Toronto: Women's Press, 1976). Nhongo-Simbanegavi, Josephine . "Zimbabwean Women in the Liberation Struggle: ZAN LA and its Legacy 1972-1985" (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Oxford University, 1997). Pedersen , Susie. "National Bodies, Unspeakable Acts: The Sexual Politics of Colonial Policy Making ," Journal ofModern History 63 (1991) : 647-80. Petchesk y, Rosalind . Abortion and Womens Choice: The State, Sexuality and Reproductive

Freedom (Boston MA: Northeastern UP, 1991). Rees, Helen. " Women and Reproductive Rights," in Putting lthmen on the Agenda, ed. Belinda Bozzoli (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1991): 209-16. Sapire, K.E. "Family Planning," Rhodesia Science News (April 1971): 104-10. Seidman, Gay. "Women in Zimbabwe: Post-Independence Struggles," Feminist Studies 10.3 (1984) : 420-40. Senate Committee on Population (US House of Representat ives). The Depo-Provera Debate

August 8, 9, 101978, 95th Congress, 2nd Session (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1978), Staunton , Irene. Mothers ofthe Revolution (Harare: Baobab, 199I). Still, Elizabeth. "Problems of Family Planning in Rhodesia," Family Planning (January 1973): 91-95 . Stoler, Ann Laura. "Making Empire Respectable : The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in Twentieth Century Colonial Culture," American Ethnologist 16.4 (1989) : 634-60. Vaughan, Megan . Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Palo Alto CA: Stanford UP, 1991). Weiss, Ruth . The WomenofZimbabwe (London: Kesho, 1986). West, Michael. "Nationalism, Race and Gender : The Politics of Family Planning in Zimbabwe 1957-1990," Social Science and Medicine 73 (1994) : 447-71. White, Luise. '" They Could Make Their Victims Dull': Genders and Genres, Fantasies and Cures in Colon ial Southern Uganda," American Historical Review (December 1995): 1379-1402. Zimbabwe National Family Planning Council. Strategy fo r the Zimbabwe National Family

Planning Programme 1991-1996 (Harare : ZNFPC , 1991).

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Self-Representation and Reconstructions of Southern African Pasts Bessie Head 's A Bewitched Crossroad Desiree Lewis

Introduction

A

FRICANIST HISTORIANS such as David Cohen I have questioned the way that history becomes the preserve of professionals . Situated within canons , specialist historical knowledges sideline the productions of vindi-

viduals making and holding historical knowledge in all their complexity and individuality - considerably concerned with interests, objectives, recreation , and esteem, and rather less concerned with performing history according to some cultural design ."2 Nineteenth-century Southern Africa has been an especially contested terrain for expert producers of history. Althoug h debates have flourished about the meanings of this period, they circulate in canons as expert-driven productio ns of authoritative knowledge. Particularly revealing about the assumptions of many strands in the canon is the way they reproduce hegemonic discourses of gender and colonialism. These discourses betray the socially dominant locations and subjectivities of producers of history, despite their emphatic claims to the disinterested objectivi ty of scholarly accuracy. Bessie Head's historical novel A Bewitched Crossroad is a self-consciously fictive reconstruction of the past, yet const itutes an interesting intervention into a body of specialist historical writing . Reassessing both the subject-matter and the strategies of authoritative constructions of the historica l past, Head draws attention

I

David Cohen , The Combing of History (Chicago & London: U of Chicago P, 1994).

2

David Cohen , "The Undefining of Oral Tradition ," Ethnohistory 36 (Winter 1989): 15.

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to their fundamentally autobiographical impulses and highlights their grounding in gender and colonial discourses . Her version of the past consequently becomes both a critique of mainstream history and a celebration of memories, processes and subjects which this mainstream excludes or silences. I deal with Head 's intervention by focusing mainly on four influential schools in historical accounts of the Southern African past, schools which emerged before and at the time Head's novel was publ ished in 1984.3 I go on to consider how her historical novel indirectly points up academic codifications of subjectivity and discovers new voices, events and textual strategies . My aim is not to provide a comprehensive or detailed critique of historical debates. I also hasten to concede that recent professional historical accounts, such as those grounded in ' history from below' or oral and social history, have unsettled earlier gender, colonial or metropolitan biases and have developed scholarly interpretations that are not so far removed from the tenor of Bessie Head's fictional account. I am concerned primarily with demonstrating how an author, well-known for her literary preoccupation with socially marginal subject-positions and narratives, turns in her last novel to history as a domain for dislodging dominant discourses.

Gendered and colonial meanings in representations of Southern Africa Although generally recognized as a phase of autochthonous transformation or of change shaped by colonial expansion, nineteenth-century Southern Africa has also been construed as a blank space, a zone of cultural mystery to which a literate culture has minimal access. The remoteness and voicelessness of the nineteenth century provide considerable scope for historicizing presents: interpreters have stabilized knowledge and languages that were oral and fluid, redrawn and fixed geographical and social boundaries, and encoded the past in a symbolic order largely appropriate to the present. 'Voiceless' and 'blank,' the past is also the meeting-point of past and present, interpretation and its object.

3 It is for this reason that later scholarship, such as the definitive The Mfecane Aftermath: Reconstructive Debates in Southern African History, cd. Carolyn Hamilton (Johannesburg & Pietermaritzburg: Witwatersrand UP & U of Natal P, 1995), is not included in the discussion of historiography here.

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In colonial constructions of nineteenth-century Southern Africa, perception of the difference of that century is shaped by hierarchical division - barbarism, stasis and ignorance opposed to civilization, progress and enlightenment. One of the earliest inventions of this hierarchical system is G.M. Theal's eleven-volume History

of South Africa, a painstaking documentation of events underpinned by the theme of "whether civilization or barbarism was to prevail.?" TheaI's historicizing active ly constructs the superior colonial subject. By referring to the "law that impels Europeans to struggle for knowledge and power,"? he identifies the autobiographical thrust of his knowledge-production. With Theal, the colonial presence establishes ascendancy through a selective classificatory system of "facts that can be proved [...] that cannot be misinterpreted/'" Echoing TheaI's construction of the dominant colonizing subject, F.A. van Jaarsveld denies the physical existence of an indigenous population and allows the Voortrekkers to encounter "empty land [...] unpopulated territory."? The most influential reaction to white colonial discourse is the African Nationalist history typified by J.D. Omer-Cooper's Zulu Aftermathr Omer-Cooper sets out to demonstrate that Southern Africa - prior to the arrival of the colonizers - was not a claimable space devoid of subjectivity and innovation. The mass migration, militarization and general structural evolution of Southern African polities are seen largely in terms of autonomous nation-building and the wars and upheaval of 'mfecane :' A term which directly signals indigenous processes, mfecane was fuelled mainly by the military zeal and ambition of awesome African heroes like Shaka. Importantly, Omer-Cooper's focus is the centralized military state, the large-scale aggregation of small 'tribes' into major ones like the "Ndebele" and "Tswana." These are ruled by enterprising leaders who embark either on massive colon izing campaigns or on consolidative nation-building. It is in this masculinistl imperialist model of mfecane state-building, power consolidation and militarization that OmerCooper locates the past, his diction and macrocosmic paradigm elevating the colo-

4 Quoted in Chris Saunders, The Making ofthe South African Past (Cape Town: David Philip, 1988): 27. 5 G.M . Theal , History ofSouth Africa (Cape Town: Struik, 1964), vol. 10: I .

6

Quoted in Saunders, The Making ofthe South African Past, 18.

F.A. Van Jaarsveld, From Van Riebeeck to Vorster, J652~J9 74: An Introduction to the History ofthe Republic ofSouth Africa (Johannesburg: Perskor, 1975). S J.D. Orner-Cooper, The Zulu Aftermath : A Nineteenth Century Revolution in Bantu Africa (London: Longman, 1966) : 9. 7

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nizing process into a seemingly inevitable law of conquest , power consol idation and state formation . Omer-Cooper thus 'captures' the colonized's subjectivity by using the same procedures of self-defin ition as the discourse of the white colonizer. Ostensibl y constructing a past that speaks independentl y, he metamorphos es the colonial process and duplicates the basic rules of the imperial enterprise. The subjectivity he recovers becomes a contending colon ialism, a definition of African agency which, while subverting the subjecti vizing of the metropolitan authorit y, depends on projecting a conquerable Other. It is noteworthy that his interpretation of the period before mfecane echoes colonial accounts of native ' prehistory,' the primary aim of celebrating mfecane being to construe a moment of native subjectivity that is comparable to the metropolitan subject. Startlingly reminiscent of colonial writings , his interpretation betrays a compulsion to create a nationalist counterpart to colonialist representation, an identit y which is on a par with the selfhood of the colonizing subject. OmerCooper writes: The reorganization of society on military lines was accompanied by a new ethos. The [...] naive curiosity which meant that the visitor to a Bantu village was immediately surrounded by a mob [ ] staring [...] openly begging for gifts, was replaced by a more reserved attitude [ ] pride [...] a sense of discipline, order and cleanliness [...] at once attracted the attention of European travellers."

Feminist social scientists like Cynthia Enloe have demonstrated persuasively how nationalism is inextricabl y intertwined with gender discourses. Enloe argues that nationalisms have "typically sprung from masculinized memory, masculinized humiliation and masculinized hope ."!" Orner-Cooper's nationalist account is revealing not only for the way in which it duplicates colon ial narratives of conquest and subject-formation; it also lays bare the gendering of history from an African nationalist perspective. Echoing other nationalist cultural projects, he foregrounds both the militaristic action and the binaristic oppos ition between self and Other that are central to the definition of the masculine subject. Thus, his African nationalist intervention becomes a gendered production which selectively celebrates particular subjects and processes with the aim of asserting masculinized African agency in the face of colonialist myth-making.

Orner-Cooper, Zulu Aftermath, 37. Cynthia Enloe, Bananas. Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley: U of California P, 1989): 44. 9

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Contrasting with Omer-Cooper's emphasis on polit ics and the agency of actors are Marxist interpretations that treat his primary concerns as features of the superstructure.'! With their emphasis on 'impersonal' economic forces and historical laws, Marxists openly contest Omer-Cooper's nationalist ideological investment. Connecting the processes of state-building to the presumed determinacy of modes of production , they develop concepts that explain both capitalism and 'pre-capitalism,' showing how relations of production, class exploitation and patterns of distribution can be analysed in pre-capitalist formations in much the same way as they can be examined in capitalist ones. The emergence of the centralized system in Southern Africa is thus seen to herald the emergence of modem exploitative relations and nascent 'classes.' Structural developments are explained as the attempts of groups to extend control in the ultimate pursuit of surplus appropriation. This approach provides a convenient foundation for examining the penetration of capitalism as 'articulation.' 12 Marxists thus homogenize the laws of the metropolis, entrenching notions of Third-World transformation by an advanced politicoeconomic force. The nineteenth century, a proving-ground for the centre 's production of knowledge, becomes trapped in a "process of othering luxated from the more extensive, multivalent and motile discursive practices of imperialisrn.t'l ' The use of the term 'articulation' to define the colonial encounter with indigenous societies is a striking indication ofthe eurocentric Marxist impulse: the construction of a manageable past that can be made captive to the hegemonic paradigms of the metropolitan Left. Despite its preoccupation with economic forces, the self-interest of the Marxist historian is blatantly apparent in the way the nineteenth century becomes a passive and static space; agency and authority are located in the process of knowledge production, while the object of interpretation remains a static Other about which knowledge is produced. In the ostensible radicalism of Marxist accounts, then, a colonial paradigm situates nineteenth-century Southern Africa as a passive object of knowledge, an object facilitating metropolitan authority and subject-formation . Another materialist analysis of nineteenth-century Southern Africa has been initiated by Julian Cobbing . Cobbing departs from the Marxist mode of exploring

II These are well illustrated in Economy and Society in Pre-Industrial South Africa, ed. Shula Marks & Anthony Atmore (London: Longman, 1980). 12 See Harold Wolpe, "Capitalism and Cheap Labour Power in South Africa," Economy and Society I (1972): 425-56. 13 Benita Parry, "Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse," Oxford Literary Review 9.1-2 (1987): 33.

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the economic laws ofAfrican polities as self-sustaining, and sees the latter, rather, as products of the slave trade. The persuasiveness of his thesis is attested to by a recent edition of T.R.H. Davenport's South Africa: A Modern History.t" In his preface to this fourth edition, Davenport stresses that it is no longer possible to explain the Southern African dynamic in terms of mfecane; in a re-writing of the period that draws heavily on Cobbing, Davenport locates the roots of nineteenth-century stateformation not in mfecane, Zulu expansionism and the nation-building drives of pioneering local leaders, but in the demand for slaves and their illegal capture by the British and the Portuguese. Cobbing's argument that the 'precolonial past' is ultimately shaped by the colonizing present results in an 'alternative' that reproduces models of colonized passivity. An indigenous population becomes active only by reacting to colonial prompting: the Southern African margin is simply appended to an account of the progress of the metropolitan centre. Beyond the oppositional exposure of exploitative colonial practice, Cobbing resituates the colonized in a position of passive and peripheral subordination. His production of nineteenth-century Southern Africa can thus be aligned with Marxist interpretations in which scrutiny of a Third-World region is simply appended to metropolitan knowledge-production . More specifically, it echoes earlier colonial accounts in the way Southern Africa is seen to acquire historical meaning only through processes of imperial and colonial expansion. Cobbing's project reflects a will to knowledge which is obvious in its titling as "Jetti soning the Mfecane" (1988) and "The Case Against the Mfecane" (1984).1 5 Here he explicitly defines his basic aim as a contest with particular knowledges and, in openly locating this as the object of his interpretation, he testifies to the two foundations of Michel Foucault's idea of the will to knowledge: the fact that the non-neutrality of historical consciousness derives from its "not being true," and the way in which the forms of historical consciousness belie all pretension to neutrality. It is revealing that his study is framed by an attack whose impassioned tone belies his urging of an impersonal "return to history."!" Cobbing argues for conventions of scientific consciousness that are consistently betrayed by his own language: "The

T.R.H. Davenport, South Africa: A Modern History (London: Macmillan, 1991). Julian Cobbing, "Jettisoning the Mfecane (with Perestro ika)" (unpublished seminar paper presented at the African Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, 1988), "The Case Against the Mfecane" (unpublished seminar paper presented at the African Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, 1984). 16 Cobbing, "Jettisoning the Mfecane," 6. 14

15

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mfecane [...] breaks down in every one of its sectors [00'] The whole is rotten; and so is each of the parts [00'] There is no half-way house. The thing is unreformable, unadjustable, unrepairable."! ? This sparring with mfecane theorists, relentless working on data and determined revival of fictions that bolster his own - all this is clearly driven by what Foucault describes as the "rancorous" will which "fears nothing but its own extinction." 18 Representations of the nineteenth century, then , are less concerned with the past than with the need to present the past in particular ways . Evidence about the nineteenth century is primarily testimony about its interpreters ' locations and subjectivities . Interpretations of the past become discursive productions of the narrating self, inventions in which "the subject - in the form of historical consciousness [00 '] appropriate(s], brings back under his sway, all those things that are kept at a distance by difference, and find[s] in them what might be called his abode ."!" For specialist historians before and at the time Head wrote her novel, finding an "abode" involved situating the nineteenth century in colonial and gender discourses. Represented as passive and blank, the past becomes proof either of colonial enterprise or of the authority of metropolitan knowledge-production. In models like Omer-Cooper's, an emphasis on militarism, heroism and aggressive state-building are treated as the only viable models ofAfrican agency.

A Bewitched Crossroad Head drew extensively on Omer-Cooper's Zulu Aftermath in A Bewitched Cross-

road, and her novel acknowledges its debt to the afrocentric interpretations of Omer-Cooper, Monica Wilson and Neil Parsons. But Head was acutely sensitive to the biases in African nationalist writings about the past. Her own interpretation covertly writes against the nationalist afrocentric thesis and makes a broader subversive intervention into historical representations of Southern Africa. A Bewitched

Crossroad traces the origin of a clan which travels north and lives under various forms of clientship, eventually, as the Sebina, settling among the Tswana in what becomes known as the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Head foregrounds the personalities of clan leaders; from the outset, colonialist and metropolitan denials of pre-

17

Cobbing , "Jettisoning the Mfecane," 14.

18

Quoted in Alan Sheridan, Michel Foucault: The Will to Truth (London: Tavistock, 1981): 119.

Michel Foucault , The Archeology of Knowledge , tr. Alan Sheridan-Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972) : 144. 19

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colonial African agency are subverted. By relating the "restless stirring and urge to migrate'S" to sources within the clan, Head emphasizes the autonomy of indigenous processes . Her focus on the small clan also reconstructs the projection of stasis, absence and 'prehistory' in nationalist celebration of mfecane. The oppositional thrust here derives from Head 's individuation of the margin independently of any appropriating centre; forcing back barriers, she introduces indigenous agency without recourse to the gladiatorial states of Omer-Cooper. In this way, her novel interrogates the gendered meanings in Omer-Cooper's heroic notions of African state-formation and past heroes. For Head, the celebration of heroes and societies is not predicated on militaristic or proprietorial action . Rather, the tolerance and accommodativeness of both the Sebina clan and its leader become the foundations for a triumphant precolonial humanism. Head's distinctive retrieval is sustained in the vision of a pre-mfecane Southern Africa structured in terms of ungraded relations of difference. Self-identity is seen as given when there are no encounters between groups and no clear idea of difference exists : "The small clan-based tribe, peaceful self-sufficient and providing for all its needs, was the order of the day. The barriers were raised high. Who knew the names and affairs of a neighbouring clan?" (9). Elsewhere she turns to these encounters to examine how self-awareness first emerges: during its many migrations, the Sebina retain their cultural autonomy despite interacting with other groups . When the clan leader requests permission from his patron, Mengwe, to continue the practice of circumcision, Mengwe responds by expressing interest in the practice while "some of [his) people were asked to serve Sebina and attend to all of his needs" (12). The themes of dialogue and mutual coexistence recur in the accounts of the Tswana and its leaders, who extend their boundaries without obliterating those who live among them. Khama, leader of the Tswana, applies to the British for protection when threatened by the Afrikaners, and appeals for the same process that he regulates, a process of accommodative and benevolent coexistence within which the integrity of all groupings is maintained. Generally, Head casts a searching light on the hierarchical notions of difference which colonial , metropolitan and African nationalist paradigms privilege as the driving forces of history. As part of this questioning, the novel engages directly with the conquering subjects in histories of the nineteenth century. The shift to the centre

20 Bessie Head, A Bewitched Crossroad (Johannesburg : Ad. Donker, 1984): 9. Further references to this edition are in the main text.

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in Head 's novel is introduced with critical references to the heroes of afrocentri c texts, Mzilikazi 's Ndebele, who subjugate and absorb other groups. Here the thirdperson narrator openl y adopts the voice of the threatened Other: They called themselves Ndebele, ' those-with-long-shields,' in keeping with their new method of warfare. They were never accorded this honorary title by the tribes whom they harassed, raided and killed. They were called Matabele. It meant above all, nonpeople. (18)

Reference to the roots of the word ' Matabele,' where the othering of the oppressive subject is a defence against the othering of the oppressed, reflects the re-nam ing impulse of the author's own narrative. The novel shows that, before the arrival of the historical actors lauded by OrnerCooper, respect for difference and reciprocit y prevails. With the arrival of the nation-builders in Chapter 3, parallels are established between Mzilikazi's regime and the settler-colonial enterp rise. Like Mzilikazi , the coloni zers project difference as opposition ("They had designated to themselves the title ' mensch' [people], and to servants and slaves, 's chepsel' [creatures]"; 3 1), objectifying groups whom they dominate, absorb or destroy. This investigation reaches a climax in Chapter 13, which dwells on Cecil Rhodes's mass appropriation ofland, his attempted take-over of Bechuanaland, and his political collapse after the Jameson Raid. The author's critique of annexation and bound ary-making, the ' monologues' of the Ndebele, Rhodes and the Trekboers confronts the pathology of racial, ethnic and colonial oppression ; the self-defining colonizers are seen to extend their own boundaries and continually enclose the colonized within their domain. The tempo of the narrative quickens here, contrasting with the serene pace of the novel's opening. The frenzied rhythm mirrors the insatiability of the centre and its self-defeating failure the disappearance of Rhod es after the Jameson Raid; the destruction of the Ndebel e - to respond to reciprocit y. As Sebina says: "The dwellin gs of fierce men become ruins in ashes [...] Men are not meant to be beasts of prey [...] Life was always planned for peace because people are important" (65). The conqueror 's hegemonizing narrative, then, not only disinherits the margin but also works destru ctively on the centre: refusing really to know itself, the colonizing subject constructs a sense of self that is neither itself nor the other, so that the subject, whose identity is illusory, ceases to exist. The contrast between an aggressive and self-destructive centre and the threatened yet resilient and self-affirming margin is central to Head 's novel. This reveals how the identit y of both oppressor

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and oppressed is created through their encounters with each other. The Sebina survive as the Sebina by eluding oppressive encounters and living among groups who recognize their independence. This principle of reciprocity is constantly defended by Khama: "What we want is to go forward and improve, and I think we can do so if we are wisely connected" (57). The ethical vision of A Bewitched Crossroad is exemplified by dialogue which, for the Sebina clan leader, liberates "a broad peaceful river [...] where all thought and human experience floated with graceful case" (74). Defined as a quest for knowledge of what is beyond the possession or perception of the individual or group, education encapsulates the virtues of dialogue. In Chapter 12, Head deals with the attraction to many women of Christianity and mission education for the opportunity this gives them to speak within "the world of the intellect, both political and spiritual." Tumediso, the son of a die-hard traditionalist, "slowly passes into death" (134) when denied access to learning, and his recovery rests on his interacting with what lies beyond the confines of clan, tribe and a rapidly disappearing precolonial world. Head 's affirmation of dialogue has implications for the way she recovers the clan's subject-position. The Sebina 'exists,' yet thrives in relations of interaction, so that its leader is able to say: I led my people into a foreign land with customs and practices unknown to Barolong . We could not stand apart and disdain the customs of our new land. We lost ourselves in the new culture so that today we know ourselves first as Bakalanga and scarcely remember that we were once Barolong. It has brought us no harm but was an enrich ment of our lives. (71)

While the book anticipates a recovery of identity, specific identity is circumscribed and rendered unknown and unrealizable. The ambiguity is captured in the clan leader's claim that "I can only be what I am" followed by his uncertainty about this 'being' : "And yet Sebina seemed not to understand Sebina. He was the glorious representative of the past and tradition yet he hungered for the new and unknown" (63). The clan leader's son, whose memory of Ndebele brutality prejudices him against all outsiders, cannot accept the arrival of whites among the Tswana. In a song of praise to the precolonial and pre-mfecane era, he laments the way "we fled without looking back" (128) before disappearing forever from the community. The yearning of Sebina's son and the staunch traditionalists in the novel is seen to be dislocated from a real past and constrained by present circumstances. Sekgoma's and Maruapula's imagining of 'past' reflects a suspension between ' past' and 'present,' an inability to regain what is desired and a refusal to engage with what is confronted .

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Yet it is throu gh the Sebina clan, particularly Sebina as himsel f the clan leader, that Head expl ores the idea of the lost authentic voice of the past. There are repeated referen ces to the leader 's anticipated loss of self. Seb ina "retreats into himself ' ( 133), often fears death, and experiences doubt s about his ident ity and self-know ledge. Sebin a's memory, which see ms to link him to a traditionalist like Maruapul a, pre vent s his sinking into a void without any past; yet, unlik e Maru apula, he remains open to the present. The traditionalists resist this inter act ion and in so doin g brin g about their own destruction. Sekgoma, Khama 's father , vehementl y opposes his son's policy of interacting with whites, and dies surrounded by "die-hard traditionalists of the village, old men with fierce malevolent faces , intent on shutting out anything foreign and unfam iliar" (86). In his dyin g moments he frantically recalls "his life. Secret s of the rituals of circumcision, rain-making and many other sacred ceremonies." Head 's rendering of Sebina 's consciousness also reflects her awareness of the paradox of identi fying an authentic past without erasing that position throu gh the coding of her interpretation. In Sebina 's elusiveness, she creates a space for imagining his interiority and reduces the overtly appropriative imposition of an authorial voice. The follo wing extract is typical of her representational technique : He watched his senior sons and all the able-bodied men of his elan sit hunched over the organization and collection of poles [...j He watched his senior wife, Bahkwi, gather the women around her [...j Peacefully, Scbina looked towards the not so distant town of Shoshong, with its densely crowded life. A town like Shoshong did not perturb him. He knew how life was lived in a town like Shoshong where no event of note was ever forgotten [...j and page by page, like some gigantic and invisible book, its life, its confusion, its turmoil and new direction would be comprehended by him. (66-Q7)

This combine s third-person past-tense narration with the character 's mental discourse (Sebina's rambling perceptions and private thoughts). The authorial voice generates meanin g, but tries to avoid drowning out the identity of the subject. Head encourages the reader to imagin e, allows her characte r to reveal himself, and alerts the reader to the framing of third-person narration . Importantl y, ' narrated monologue' 22 Nor, on the other hand, is my concern here with bisexuality as pathology. I do not wish to pursue the clinical condition that Adam Limentani calls the "vaginaman" as counterpart to the phallic woman.P It is enough for my purpose to register Joyce McDougall's reminder in this same collection that "psychoanalysis has as yet no comprehensive theory of core gender and sexual identity.,,24 Against this background, Dana Breen observes that, in the psychoanalytical debate, bisexuality is becoming more generally recognized 'as an essential psychological balance of identifications, and an internal balance necessary for sexual and psychic integration.t'P Moreover, what Ralph R. Greenson calls the processes of identification, disidentification and counter-identification that constitute the child's early psychological developmenr'? suggests a dynamic not unlike that of postcolonial appropriation and abrogation. Ultimately, my interest lies in the postcolonial textual intersection between gender instability and cross-cultural tensions . Some form of psychic androgyny often occurs in the lore of precolonial, indigenous cultures, African as well as Asian. The reasons why a postcolonial writer should choose to reactivate such a traditional concept when dealing with crossculturality, or else, in the absence of any such age-old notion of double-gendering, to introduce one, are obvious. Gender-blending is embodied in the postcolonial novel in various instances of bisexuality, transsexual ism or transvestism. Within the larger

21 Kari Weil , Androgyny and the Denial of Difference (Charlottesville & London : UP of Virginia, 1992): 63. 22

Weil, Androgyny and the Denial ofDifference, 2.

Adam Limentani, "To the Limits of Male Heterosexuality: The Vagina-Man" (1989) , in The Gender Conundrum : Contempora ry Psychoanalyti c Perspectives on Femininity and Masculinity, cd. Dana Breen (New Library of Psychoanalys is 18; London & New York : Routledge, 1993): 274. 24 Joyce McDougall, "The Dead Father: On Early Psychic Trauma and its Relation to Distur bance in Sexua l Identity and in Creative Activity" (1989) , in Breen, ed. The Gender Conundrum , 233. 23

25

Breen, The Gender Conundrum , 33.

Ralph R. Greenson, " Dis-Identifying from Mother : Its Special Importance for the Boy" (1968), in Breen, cd. The Gender Conundrum , 258-64 . 26

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postcolonial undertakin g of re-centering, these figures from the extreme margins now often occup y the foreground. Their very presence abrogates the heterosexual paradigm and its hegemoni c discourse; representing gender hybrid ity, they destab ilize the rigid oppo sition of masculine and feminine as core ident ities. The binary pattern is brok en; refusing gender closure, they introduce liminal pla y and ambig uity. Through their capacity for doubling and mimicr y, they are, furthermore, able both to undermine the conventional notions of sexu al identity by which they have been colonized and to empower themselves. In po stcolonial text s, trans vestites and transsexual s are shown re-inventing themselves within the larger national project of cultural and linguistic self-invention. It is when gender is more appropriately seen as "a process and not a product" as "people achiev[ing] their masculinities or femininiti es'S" - that the political efficacy of cross-gendering within the context of postcolonialism can best be understood. For it is especially when inscribed in the postcolonial text as tran ssexual ism and trans vestism that the discourse of gender-blending can be seen to intersect most tellin gly with the various strategies of language appropri ation. Writing about cro ssdressing generally, Marjorie Garber argues that "o ne of the most consistent and effective functions of the transvestite in culture is to indicate the place of what I call 'category crisis,' disrupting and calling attention to cultural , social, or aesthetic dis-

sonances. r'" (What happens to categories, for instance, when, as Garber indicates, one has to th ink of a biol ogical male who identifies himself as a woman and who is attracted to men in terms of his being a ' straight ' transsexual, whereas a biological male who identifies himsel f as a women and who is attrac ted to women is a ' gay' transsexual'S"). By ' category crisis' Garber means a failure of definitional distinction, a borderline that becomes permeable, that permits of border crossings fro m one (apparently distinct) category to another: black / white, Jew/ Christian,noble / bourgeois/, master / servant, master/ slavc' " - and, one can add , the lingui stic categories of standard code /vernacular. Feminist theorists like Janice Raymond and Peggy Phelan maintain, on the other hand, that cross-dressing is simply "a repackaging of the old gender roles ," which may "break

Ken Plummer, "Foreword: Gendersin Question," in Elkins & King, ed. Blending Genders, xiv. Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993): 16. 29 Garber, Vested Interests, 69. 30 Garber, Vested Interests, 16. 27 28

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through the semblance of masculinity" but does not "break through its political reality, that is, its power.,,31 They point, further, to the problematical misogyny that underlies gay male cross-dressing, which , rather than undermining conventional masculine and feminine behaviour, re-inscribes its binarism.F The importance of transvestism for my argument, however, lies in the way it "denaturalizes, destabilizes and defamiliarizes sex and gender signs .'>33 The transvestite performer mimics gender habits and reproduces all the codes of dress, bearing and language, but simultaneously signals the very fact of cross-dressing by means of slippages and other deliberate tell-tale signs. According to Garber, thisemphasis on reading and being read, andon thedeconstructive nature of thetransvestite performance, always undoing itself as part of its process of self-enactment, is what makes transvestism theoretically as well as politically anderotically interesting." Lesley Ferris goes so far as to propose that "transvestite theatre - cross-dressing in performance - is an exemplary source of the writerly text, a work that forces the reader/spectator to see multiple meanings in the very act of reading itself, of listening, watching a performance" ; as spectators of transvestite theatre, he says , "we are the Barthesian 'producers' of text extraordinaire. We are forced to concede to multiple meanings, to ambiguities of thought, feeling , categorization, to refuse closure.,,35 For the Cuban writer Severo Sarduy, transvestism "is probably the best metaphor for what writing really is," since it is, he says, "the coexistence, in a single body, of masculine and feminine signifiers: the tension, the repulsion, the antagonism which is created between them. ,,36 Appropriating, breaking and switching codes with great rhetorical skill , the transgenderist in the postcolonial novel negotiates the gap between worlds, his/her hybrid condition giving him /her access to oppositional discourses and thereby a kind of doub le vision. This is one of the senses in which "culture creates transvestites" and "transvestism creates culture.,,3?

Raymond, "ThePolitics of Transgenderism," 218. Peggy Phelan, "Crisscrossing Cultures," in Crossing the Stage : Controversies on CrossDressing , ed. Leslie Ferris (London & NewYork: Routledge, 1993): I 59ff. 33 Garber, Vested Interests , 147. 34 Garber, Vested Interests, 149. 35 Leslie Ferris, Crossing the Stage : Controversies on Cross-Dr essing, 8. 36 Cited in Garber, Vested Interests , 150. 37 Garber, Vested Interests, 16. 31 32

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Thi s essay will now consider whether the trope of gender-blending has featured in the South African novel in a way similar to that in the postcolonial nove!' To what exten t has the cross-gendered figure functioned cross-culturally to mediate the discourses of competing nationalisms on the difficult road to South African nationhood ? And to what degree has the standard langu age been subverted and regional varieties introduced into the national fictional discourse? Cross-ge ndering in the South African novel is as old as the genre itself. In Olive Schreiner 's Story ofan African Farm (18 83), the protagoni st Lyndall speaks for Schreiner 's concern with the restrictiveness of ninete enth- century gender soc ialization and the need to transcend it. The immature Gre gory Rose, who comes to love Lyndall, is described at first by her as a "man-woman," "a true woman one born for the sphere that some women have to fill without bein g born for it.,,38 Toward s the end of the narrative, in a chapter entitled "G regory's Womanhood," he shaves off his beard and puts on women's clothes in order to nur se the dying Lyndal!. Onl y by inhabiting the no-m an 's-land of the transvestite - one of his last services to Lyndall is to help her dress - is he able to embark on the complex process of dis-id entification and counter-identification that allows him some understanding of the dying woman' s predi cament and a measure of psychi c inte gration him self. In her stud y of Schreiner, Joyce Avrech Berkman argues that although Schrein er never used the actual term 'a ndrogy ny,' it precisely defines her vision of a ' new woman ' and a ' new man' in whom the "conventionally masculine and feminine traits" of strength and tenderness would be fuse d.I" In a real sense, it is unshakable, narro w certainty, such as that of the Boer-woman Tant ' Sannie - j ust as a woman is meant for child-be aring, so "A man 's a man, you kno w'r'? - that engenders the transvestism which in tum creates a new conception of culture. Schreiner's narrative derives much of its effect from characters who are able to negot iate and, like the English rog ue Bonaparte Blenk ins, exploit - the gap between different linguistic codes and their cultures. But whereas the Eng lish text cont ains some syntactic approximation of the Boer-wom an 's "low Cape Dutch " and, by means of a glos sary of its Cape Dutch word s, provides a degree of access to the discursive world of the South African farm, its bilin gualism does not extend to the cultural world of the Hottentot servant who sometimes acts as interpreter between the 38

Olive Schreiner, T71e Story ofan Afr ican Farm (1883; Johannesburg: Ad. Donker, 1980): 184.

Joyce Avrech Berkman, The Healing Imaginatio n of Olive Schreiner: Beyo nd Solith African Colonialism (Oxfo rd: Plant in, 1990): 14 1. 39

40

Schreiner , The Story ofan African Farm, 274.

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gullible Tant' Sannie and Blenkins. Despite the narrative evidence of this black woman's skill at switching codes, the text is never disrupted by her own indigenous language, either glossed or translated, and it remains as silent as the language of the vanished Bushmen whose voices the boy Waldo imagines speaking to him through the stones on the veld . Alan Paton 's second novel, Too Late the Phalarope (1955), is narrated by an elderly Afrikaner woman, Tante Sophie, who has a disfigured mouth. She is the unmarried aunt of the protagonist, Pieter van Vlaanderen, police lieutenant in an Eastern Transvaal town and a national rugby hero. Sophie articulates the point of intersection of the discourses of gender and bilingualism in the figure ofPieter. First, she establi shes at the outset his doubly gendered nature as a way of grasping the tragedy of this exemplary Afrikaner. Pieter 's actual crime is to have had sexual relations with a woman of colour, Stephanie, thereby breaking the most sacred commandment of postwar Afrikaner nationalism with its racist ideology, its belief in a God-given language, and its dogmatic acceptance of the authority of the Bible . So rigidly patriarchal a society allows no space for this man who, ever since boyhood, Tante Sophie says, "had something of the woman in him.,,4\ He was always "a strange son, who had all his father' s will and strength [...] yet had all the gentleness of a girl, and strange unusual thoughts in his mind" (8). His aunt recognizes that it is his refusal to gravitate unambiguously toward either masculinity or femininity that destabilizes his relationship with his father and, ultimately, his entire family : "Had he been one or the other," she says artlessly, "[...] his father would have understood him better, but he was both" (8). Secondly, by referring in the third paragraph to "the strange words of the English" (7), she alerts her reader to the fact that the language of the narrative is actually Afrikaans and so introduces a self-reflexive discourse about bilingualism and crosscultural translation. Although her code-switching is largely a matter of words and idioms , she reminds her reader that "sometimes one language has the word , and sometimes the other" (81) . Not only is her English narration influenced by Afrikaans syntax, but it is also scattered with Afrikaans expressions which she habitually translates in their context. Interwoven with Tante Sophie's narrative are extracts from her nephew's j ournal, so that her code-mixing and code-breaking also embrace his skilful metaphoric switching, to which she regularly draws our attention. We are told -

4 1 Alan Paton , Too Late the Phalarope (1955 ; Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1971): 7. Further page references are in the main text.

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although the text performs it only obliquely by means of syntactic fusion - that Pieter is equally at home in English and Afrikaans , switching from the one to the other as the situation requires or else for rhetorical effect: he uses English when speaking to his superior, the police captain, and Afrikaans with the junior sergeant; he deliberately berates one sergeant in English in order to be punitive; English is the usual language between himself and his sophisticated cousin Anna; and he occasionally speaks to himself or curses out his frustration in English. Pieter is at the centre of a larger fictional design of code negotiation across cultures which includes the enigmatic servility of the woman, Stephanie, when addressing Pieter, Pieter 's humouring of an old black man by allowing the native constable to act as interpreter between them although he is himself fluent in the vernacular, and the deliberately insulting use of the familiar 'jou' by the junior sergeant toward Pieter when his disgrace becomes known. All this liminal play of language is inseparable from the ambiguity of Pieter's troubled sexual relationship with his wife, his illicit relationship with Stephanie , and the affection he enjoys from the Jewish shopkeeper, Kapp ie. The narrative is structured in terms of these many tension s and transgressions alon g the borders of language, and sexual and gender identity. All the uneasy relationships created by the blurring of these borderlines form part of a larger discursive tension in Paton's novel: between, on the one hand, the profound disturbance of racist Afrikaner nationalism by one of its deviant sons in the narrative, and, on the other, the textual disturbance of the standard English code by Afrikaans. Sheila Fugard 's novel Rite of Passage (1976) is one of the most original attempts in South African fiction to bring disparate discourses into relation with each other. This short novel takes as its point of departure the alienation of its two protagonists and resolves the one in relation to the other within a framework of cross-gendering. The one is a reclusive , elderly doctor, James, who has been living in Sekhukhuneland for ten years and who remains haunted by the memory of a severely disturbed woman patient who drowned herself; the other is a traumatized young student, Kyle, who has reacted with violence and then fled in shock from a homosexual encounter on a train travelling through Sekhukhuneland. In this remote area, the doctor assumes the role of traditional healer, the Thipana, in relation to an initiate, the Mediti, and treats Kyle by submitting him to the Pedi tribal initiation ceremony: circumcision, the enactment of a mock marriage, lenyalo la ditseka , during which the boys take on the roles of husband and wife, and nurse the lesea, a bead-covered doll which symbolizes the child of this union. When Kyle has passed throu gh the initiation rite and become the diagolane, or survivor, he regains his

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speech. Their roles eventually become reversed, however, when, despite his irritation, the student nurses the dying doctor and ministers to him in this final rite of passage. Fugard's mythography attempts to syncretize the Tibetan Book ofChanges, I Ching, with African tribal discourse in a search for psychic wholeness beyond binarism . (Pedi initiation-terms and those of the I Ching are both trans lated in context and explained in a separate glossary.) At the interface of not only Western and African but also of Eastern and African philosophical systems, an initiate mimics his mentor to both acquire his wisdom and free himself from his authority. He says: "Scribe to his suffering, I decode his muffled speech, and make beautiful English out of his trauma . I mimic the wise Thipana. He is now the lost Mediti . He is failing in the Wilderness of Death. He is not a diagolaner'? Before he dies, Dr James has a dream of himself as androgynous : his breasts flowing with milk, he gives birth to

noko, the porcupine, the totemic symbol of the Pedi. After the doctor's death, Kyle imagines him reciting the names of the kings of Sekhukuneland, but he is now able to think of this patriarchal lineage in terms that transcend rigid gender categories : "Maybe, " he says, "the kings will come bearing the emblems of their rank. Crooning over the lesea babies of the rite of circumcision .t'P As South Africa has finally moved towards nationhood, transsexual ism, transvestism and bisexuality have become much more explicitly centred in recent fiction in various ways that need to be distingu ished from the kind of androgyny Nadine Gordimer had in mind when she claimed that "all writers are androgynous beings ."44 Each of these inscriptions of transgenderism into the national fictional discourse raises questions concerning the particular cultural politics of such sexual equivocation in contemporary South African writing . In Born of Man (1989), his novel narrated largely in the idiom of the white South African gay subculture , Stephen Gray develops the conceit that the country which produced the first heart transplant can also produce the first man in history to bear a baby. What needs to be questioned, however, is the disjunction between the outrageous cross-gendering in the novel and the way the text equally outrageously reinforces gay stereotypes. The pun in the title of Pieter-Dirk Uys's 'biography' of his transsexual alter ego, Evita Bezuidenhout, A Part Hate A Part Love (1990), reSheila Fugard, Rite ofPassage (Johannesburg: Ad. Donker, 1976): 89. Fugard, Rite ofPassage, 98. 44 Nadine Gordimer, "Selecting my Stories" (originally introduction to Selected Stories 1975), in Gordimer, The Essential Gesture: Writing. Politics and Places, ed. & intro. Stephen Clingman (Johanne sburg: Taurus, & Cape Town: David Philip, 1988): 95. 42

43

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fleets the way his /her life has been paradoxically locked into the conflicting discourses of apartheid South Africa that he / she has satirized on stage across the borderlines of gender, language and race. But here, too, the latent misogyny in South Africa's best-known drag act needs to be scrutinized more closely, especially the possibility that Uys, rather than dismantling gender roles, may also in fact be reinforcing them. Antony Sher's novel The Indoor Boy (1991) sustains a campy gay discourse in its account of the reintroduction into South Africa of its protagonist, a wealthy, flagrantly bisexual, Jewish expatriate, from the margins of exile in London. What needs to be more carefully considered, despite the attempt of the novel to explore cultural equivocation in terms of sexual equivocation, is Sher's inability, on the one hand, to situate his narrative in any kind of affirmative gay discourse parading instead a gallery of gay gargoyles - and, on the other, his constant reduction of cross-gender and cross-cu ltural relationships to pathological violence . This unfortunate cultural and gender essentialism is especially true of a later novel by him, Cheap Lives (1995) . In contrast, Damon Galgut's novel The Beautiful Scream-

ing ofPigs (1991) has as its subject a psychologically damaged young man who, as a result of his gender indeterminacy, feels dislocated from reality in Southern Africa. He is made aware through a brief homosexual encounter during the Angolan War of his exclusion from the dominant "brotherhood of men,,45 who have created the larger political tensions in the subcontinent. His periodic anxiety attacks stem from his having to negotiate the interfaces of oppositional discourses, like his mercurial mother, whom he describes as "Afrikaans by extraction, English by cultivati on [... and] never [...] African, except by irnitation.T'" Galgut's achievement in entering a gay discursive space, although not unproblematical in this novel, can usefully be compared with the way Koos Prinsloo has done so in his fiction with regard to Afrikaner patriarchy. Trans-genderism with its dynamic of mimicry and slippage provides a way of understanding one of the most powerful images of cross-dressing in contemporary South African fiction : the famous androgynous picture of Sophie Schliemann "decked out in Agamemnon's treasure hoard."? This hangs in the study of Elizabeth Curren, a retired academic who is dying of cancer and the narrator of J.M. Coetzee's Age ofIron (1990). Her narrative provides a complex and moving account of self45

Damon Galgut , The Beautiful Scream ing ofPigs (1991 ; London : Abacus, 1992) : 70.

46

Galgut, The Beautiful Screaming ofPigs, 46.

47 J.M. Coetzee, Age of Iron (New York : Random House, 1990): 13. Further page reference s are in the main text.

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recognition across the borders of gender and language - English, Afrikaans and Latin. Mrs Curren is able to deconstruct the disabling discourse of apartheid, to which all have been ideologically subjugated, by acknowledging the extent to which it has constituted her as subject. As a professor of classical languages , she recognizes, moreover, that she has her being in a discursive system that goes back to a period long before apartheid : she has been the custodian of its narratives and an exponent of its rules of grammar and prosody; she has instructed others in its conju gations. She has spoken with a weight of masculine authority which she now abrogates. She breaks the codes of this ancient tradition so as to dis-mantle its power, to divest herself of the rigid masculinity that has left her hollowed out. Because she is so schooled in them, she is able deliberately to bend the iron rules of grammar and logic. Knowin g that it is a lie, for instance, she explains the derivation of the word charity from the Latin word for heart . "But what does it matter," she observes , "if my sermons rest on false etymologies?" (22). The end - caring and loving - ju stifies the irregular means. Only when Mrs Curren stumbles in the rain through filthy pond s and bushes to the shanties among the sand dunes and witnesses a "scene of devastation " as shacks are burnt down by gangs of men, the conscripts of apartheid whom she first mistakes for rescuers, while a woman tries to salvage some of her possession s, does language finally fail her. Caught up in a scene of chaos which is punctuated by screaming and gunfire, she says, "To speak of this [...] you would need the tongue of a god" (99). It is significant that in his next novel, The Master ofPetersburg ( 1994), Coetzee locates his Dostoe vskian debate about fiction and history between two oppositional figures in each of whom the genders appear to be blended: on the one hand, Councillor Maximov, "a bald man with the tubby figure of a peasant wornan.?" and on the other, the revolutionary, Nechaev, whom the novelist-narrator encounters disguised as a woman and whom he perceives, ironically, as a "singer, a contralto: a contralto queen"? What might further be considered in Coetzee 's fiction is the relation between cross-dressing as thematized in both Age ofIron and The Master of Petersbu rg and transvestism as performed in the narrative 'drag acts' of In the Heart of the Country and Age of Iron with their female narrators. This mutual inscription of gender roles between author and narrator might also be examined in relation to Coetzee 's thinking about the reciprocal inscription of the narrative roles of history

48 49

1.M. Coetzee, The Master ofPetersburg (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1994): 31. Coetzee, The Master ofPetersburg, 100.

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and the novel as outlined in his essay "The Novel Today" (1988), and in relation to the complex dynamic of imitation and difference between his own novels and their 'classical ' intertexts from, among others, Virgil, Dante and Dostoevsky, along the lines explained in his article "What is a Classic?" (1993) To return, in conclusion, to Nadine Gordimer: in her novel None to Accompany Me (1994) , she departs from the conventionally gendered world of all her previous

fiction in her presentation of the lawyer Vera Stark, her husband, Bennet, their daughter, Annick, whose features perfectly reflect her father's male beauty, and their son , Ivan, whom Bennet has always favoured because he is the image of his mother. The gender-blending is compounded by Annick 's lesbian relationship with Lou, with whom she sets up house in Cape Town and adopts a child. And when Bennet leaves for London to share a bachelor life with his divorced son, Vera sells the family home to move as a tenant into the annexe of Zeph Rapulana, the African with whom she shares a deep friendship that goes beyond any sexual pull: "they belonged together," we are told, "as a single sex, a reconciliation of all each had experienced, he as a man, she as a woman.P'' Displaced from the certainties of the old South Africa, Gordimer's characters await the new one in an anteroom of political and gender provisionality. It remains to be seen how far the discourse of gender-blending will be sustained by Gordimer herself, and by other South African novelists, as they all enter more fully in their fiction into a democratic and multilingual South Africa.

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50 Nad ine Gordimer, None to Accompany Me (Cape Town & Johannesburg : David Philip, 1994): 123.

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Gray, Stephen. Born ofMan (Yeoville, Johannesburg: Justified Press, 1989). Greenson, Ralph R. "Dis-Identifying from Mother: Its Special Importance for the Boy" (1968), in Breen, ed. The Gender Conundrum, 258-64. Hagedorn, Jess ica. Dogeaters (1990; New York & Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991). Heilbrun, Carolyn G Toward a Recognition of Androgyny ( 1974; New York & London:

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Norto n, 1982). Holmes, Ja net. An Introduction to Sociolingu istics (London & New York: Longman, 1992). Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. Heat and Dust (1975; London: Abacus, 1992). Limentani, Adam. "To the Limits of Male Heterosexuality: The Vagina-Man" (1989), in Breen, ed. The Gender Conundrum, 273-85 . McDougall, Joyce. "The Dead Father: On Early Psychic Trauma and its Relation to Disturbance in Sexual Identity and in Creative Activity" (1989), in Breen, ed. The Gender Conundrum, 233- 57. Nanda, Serena. "The Hijras of India: Cultural and Individual Dimensions of an Institutionali zed Third Gender Role" (1985), in Culture and Human Sexuality : A Reader, ed. David N. Suggs & Andrew W. Miracle (Pacific Grove CA: Brooks / Cole, 1993): 279-93. Paton, Alan. Too Late the Phalarope (1955; Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1971). Phelan, Peggy. "C risscrossing Cultures," in Ferris, ed. Crossing the Stage, 155-70. Plummer, Ken. "Foreword: Genders in Question," in Elkins & King, ed. Blending Genders, xii-xvii. Raymond, Janice. "The Politics of Transgenderism" (1994), in Elkins & King, ed. Blending Genders, 2 15-23. Schreiner, Olive. The Story ofan African Farm (1883; Johannesburg: Ad. Donker, 1980). Sher, Antony. Cheap Lives (London: Little, Brown, 1995).

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- -. The Indoor Boy (1991 ; Harmondsworth: Penguin , 1992). Singer, June . Androgyny: Toward a New Theory ofSexuality (New York: Doubleday/Anchor, 1977). Uys, Pieter-Dirk. A Part Hate A Part Love: The Biography ofEvita Bezuidenhout (Sandton, South Africa : Radix, 1990). Weil, Kari . Androgyny and the Denial of Difference (Charlottesville & London : UP of Virginia, 1992). White, Patrick. The Twyborn Affair (1979 ; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981).

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Targeted for Change Cameroonian Women and Missionary Designs in Some Fiction by Mongo Beti Elias Bongmba

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I DI SCU SS GEN DE R IN EQUALITY in Cameroonian society through the literary works of Mongo Beti (pseudonym of Alexandre Biyidi, b. 1932), primarily The Poor Christ of Bomba and King Lazarus.' My specific objective is to argue that Mongo Beti's work portrays colonialism and the missionary enterprise as massive projects of transformation, but that Catholic Church efforts - which may have been motivated by good intentions - did not depart substantially from a patriarchal system. Beti's fiction suggests that missionaries used women as targets of change, but in doing so the church further 'vict imized' women. It is important to state at this point that my reading has been enriched by the work of several Beti scholars.? While I am in agreement with much of this, my take is somewhat different, because I read Beti's novels as cultural products that provide insights into the religious and social issues which are my focus here. This is distinct from most critical writings on Beti's work, which address literary issues from different disciplinary (or interdisciplinary) angles. My intention here is to relate Beti's work to anthropological and theological literature on the Beti themselves as a group, as well as to other people of Cameroon. This is where my approach differs from N T H IS ES SA Y

I I use •gender' in this essay to refer to what Iris Young calls metaphysical categories people use to organize their world. As Young argues, "the integrating mythologies of most cultures rely heavily on gender symbols, as do most legitimating ideologies"; Young, "Is Male Gender Identity the Cause of Male Domination"," in Mothering, ed. Joyce Treblicot (Totowa NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1984): 135.

2 See Research in African Literature and other African literary j ournals, as well as the essays in Critical Perspectives on Mongo Beti, ed. Stephen H. Amold (Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998).

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other Beti scholarship but where it is arguably very much in the spirit of Mongo Beti himself, who through fiction and other works addresses very concrete issues in the lives of most people in Cameroon.

Working assumptions My first point is that Beti's fiction is a form of political engagement because, in his works, Beti is critical of colonialism and the neocolonial state of Cameroon.' In questioning the grand narratives of Cameroonian society, Beti's fiction engages with postcolonial themes in his challenge to narratives presented by missionaries, anthropologists, journalists and travellers. In addition, Beti is very critical of 'traditional' society because the latter does not offer any viable alternative." Beti's early works advocated positions held by the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC) that called for the liberation of Cameroon from French control.t He interrupted his writing career for about sixteen years but resumed in the I970s, publishing several works with the intention of raising political consciousness . Main basse sur Ie Cameroun (1972) is critical of the neocolonialism buttressed by French interest and resulting in a repressive and corrupt regime." Beti then published Remember Ruben (1973), Perpetue (1974) and La Ruine presque cocasse d 'un polichinelle (1979). He also founded and edited People noirs, peuples africains in 1978 to articulate his 3 Richard Bjornson, The African Quest for Freedom and Identity : Cameroonian Writing and the National Experience (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991): 88. During his student days at the Lycee Leclerc in Yaounde, Beti joined the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UP C), whose leader, Ruben Urn Nyornbe, is the subject of three works by Beti (Main basse sur Ie Cameroun, Remember Ruben and Perpetuei. French colonial police suppressed the UPC ruthlessly in an attack in 1955 and reportedly as many as 2,500 people lost their lives. Supporters of the movement fought a guerrilla war with both the colon ial government and the independent government of Cameroon until one of its leaders, Ernest Ouandie, was captured and executed in 1971; Kandioura Drame, The Novel as Transformation ofMyth : A Study ofthe Novels ofMongo Beti and Ngugi wa Thiong 'o (Ithaca NY : Syracuse UP, 1990):1 I. 4 "But if their (colonialist) dominance in Africa is based upon a fundamental injustice, traditional society as Beti portrays it fails to offer a viable alternative . Many traditional practices are themselves unjust and prevent Africans from coping with the modem world and its relations of power; others have been distorted by the introduction of a money economy and an administrative system that makes local chiefs dependent on white colonial officials ; still others allow corrupt elders to wield unjust authority over women and young men"; Bjornson, The African Quest for Freedom and Identity , 90.

S Beti's first political work was titled Sans haine et sans amour, a revolutionary piece that addressed the Mau Mau struggle in Kenya. 6

Most ofBeti's writings during this time were banned in France as well as in Cameroon.

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critical praxis," In 1989 Beti and Odile Tobner published Dictionnaire de fa Negritude, a work that not only provides useful references on various issues and personalities but which also falls generally within Beti's programme of raising awareness. Beti scholars point out that the novel Perpetue, which presents the travail of a young woman in a corrupt society, is one of the author's strongest statements on the situation of women. This novel is also a call for oppressed people to resist political domination in a neocolonial society." Beti uses different voices to highlight the marginalization of women. In his later works, Beti gives the voice of a protagonist to a white woman, thereby indicating his perspective that all people should engage in the fight for justice in Cameroon. Odile Cazenave argues that interracial marriage provides an opportunity for a white woman to use her new position in Cameroonian society to this end: The interracial marriage becomes only the housing for white women. Because of her privileged position at the intersection of the two cultures, she is now officially entitled to be both a participant as well as an observer, with the necessary distance to critique African postcolonial society"

Beti returned to Cameroon in 1991 after a long absence, initially at the invitation of Ambroise Kom and Celestin Monga.!'' His return stirred up political wrangles with the Biya government, which mounted a smear campaign against Beti calling him a French citizen. Robert Sherrington argues, correctly, that Beti has not merely evolved from being anti-Christian and anticolonial to being anti-Ahidjo and antiBiya in his long career as writer and political activist. Rather, he has remained a consistent opponent of evil in all its forms. II Secondly, I read Mongo Beti alongside feminist critics, because his narratives anticipate gender and feminist debates. I do not want to claim that Beti's agenda is 7 Robert Sherrington, "The Use of Mongo Beti," in Arnold, ed. Critical Perspectives on Mongo Beti, 393--404.

8 Evelyn Ellerman argues that the genre Beti uses is passio, modelled after the martyr stories of the early church, especially The Passion of St Perpetua of North Africa, who was martyred in Carthage in about 203 AD ; Ellerman, "The Passion of Perpetua: A Generic Approach to Beti's Perpetue" Research in African Literatures 24.3 (1993): 25-34. 9 Odile Cazenave , "The White Woman in Interracial Couples in Mongo Beti's Dzewatama Novels," in Arnold, ed. Critical Perspectives on Mongo Beti, 247. 10 Ambroise Kom, "Mongo Beti Returns to Cameroon : A Journey into Darkness," in Research in African Literatures 22.4 (1991): 147-53; Cilas Kemedjio et aI., "Mongo Beti: The Nobility of a Struggle," African Literature Bulletin 18.4 (Fall 1992): 31-33. II Sherrington, "The Use of Mongo Beti," 398.

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driven primarily by feminist concerns, but it is clear to me that his distinct contribution is that he uses irony to analyse structures of power and domination in Cameroonian society because these structures perpetuate the subjugation of women. His fiction calls for jus tice, which can be attained through a reconfiguration of relation ships in order to recognize difference. My reading of Beti's work as a critique of both preco lonial and postcolonial society challenges such critics as Oyekan Owomoyela who see feminist ideas as an intrusion of foreign ideology into African studies.V I shall be returning to this issue later; but, for now, I would agree with Obioma Nnaemeka's assessme nt: our job as literary critics [and observers of the African scene1 should be to open texts up to possibilities by addressing the complex issues in them, however, contradictory they may be; often, those contradictions lead us to where the meanings are. 13

Precolonial and colonial institutions: gendered avenues for male ambition Beti employs irony, satire and multivocality to map out a hegemonic terrain occupied by both precolonial and colonial structures, represented by chiefly power in the precolonial period and state and religious power during colonialism. The central characte rs in the novels I shall discuss are two Catholic missionaries, the Father Superior Drumont, who is central in The Poor Christ ofBomba, and Father Le Guen who is centra l in King Lazarus. Both missionaries are present in both novels. In The Poor Christ, Father Le Guen is an assistant to the Father Superior Drumont. Beti's portraits of these and other characters highlight the prob lematical side of the missionary enterprise and its institutional presence, the church, which imposed alien views on the peop le and complicated the traditional gendered space and mode of existence. !" Beti presents both priests as powerful, ambitious yet naive 'colonials' whose operations resemble a multinational enterprise. 15 12 Oyekan Owomoyela, The African Difference: Discourses on Africanicity and the Relativity ofCultures (Johannesburg: Witswatersrand UP, 1996). 13 Obioma Nnaemeka, "Feminism, Rebellious Women and Cultural Boundaries: Rereading Flora Nwapa 's Children Fiction," Research in African Literatures 26.2 (1995): 98. 14 Writing on gender relations in another part of the continent, Jean Comaroffargues that in the case of the Tshidi people, the Methodist mission used pre-existing structures to establish a hegemonic enterprise ; Comaroff, Body of Power, Sp irit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South Afric an People (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1985).

15

Andre Djiffack, Mongo Beti: La Quete de la Liberte (Paris: L'Harm attan, 2000): 149.

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In both works , Beti uses Cameroonian characters such as Dennis and Zachar ia and then Makrita to focalize the issues through the attitude of the priests . Such Cameroonian figures provide the reader with a complex picture of missionary power and negative praxis.! " The missionaries wield complete power over the lives of the peopl e and expect even non-Christians to accept their authorit y. Beti 's comp elling irony capture s the arrogance of the senior missionary in The Poor Christ through the voice of Father Le Guen when he writes to his mother about the failures of Father Drumont and claims he judges his predeces sor from a position of superiority: He was a proud and violent man. Prone to rebellion and despair, I felt that no Christian could be allowed such powers as his, much less claim the destiny of the church rested upon his shoulders."

The missionaries are not only ambitious but naive as well, thinking that Africans will come flocking to them and abandon all of their customs - which does not happen. The mission of Father Drumont is economically exploitative - he demands that the parishioners pay their dues. He has established a sixa, a settlement for women who want to escape polygamy, but this sixa is arguably a colonial institution and a gendered avenue for male ambition.l" Other male perspectives and pract ices are also represented as questionable. Zacharia, for example, defends his liaison with another woman by claiming that his wife is nursing their baby and he needs a woman for sexual satisfaction . Furthermore, his friends claim that by having an affair with Clementine, a sixa woman ,

16 Susan Gasster-Carriere, " Mongo Beti' s Priests in Perspective," in Crilical Perspectives on Mongo Beti, ed. Stephen H. Arnold (Boulder CO: Lynne Reinner, 1998): 290. 17 Mongo Beti, King Lazarus (New York: Collier, 1971): 32. 18 Djiffack, Mongo Beti: La Quete de la Liberte, 150, 151. Jane Guyer argues that "the church's profound influence on the situation was achieved less by active lobbying on behalf of widows than by offering them an alternative retreat, namely, the sixa, a residential training school for Christian women"; Guyer, " Beti Women Inheritance and Marriage Law: A Social History," in Widows in Afri can Studies : Choices and Constraints, ed. Betty Potash (Stanford CA : Stanford UP, 1986): 209. The hope was that the women would eventually get married into a monogamou s structure and in some cases the church helped them find a spouse; Guyer, Family and Farm in Southern Cameroon (Boston MA: African Studies Centre, Boston University, 1984): 44. However, the women did not gain any economic autonomy because the crops they raised all belonged to the church. They were subject to strict discipline and lived there for about two years. "In many ways, the productive organization of the sixa resembled a polygymous village. The ideology of paternalism was substituted for the ideology of marital relations" (44). A woman living there, for example , was called ngon fada, 'daughter of the priest' (43).

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Zacharia has done nothin g wrong, becau se she is not married ; for that reason, he has not cau sed any offenc e to anyone. Only if a man "owns" a woman is it wron g for another man to have an affair with her; if she does not "belong" to a man, she is ava ilable to all. Thi s view makes women's sexu ality a mere extension of men 's sexual des ires. The case can be made here that the local men as well as mission Christianity attempted to control and dominate women and their bodies. An examination of specific voices reveals some of the power dynamics inherent in Christian masculinity. First, through the voice of the main character in The Poor Christ the reader disco vers that Father Drumont's missionary adventure into Cameroon is not inspired by evangelism but is a response to the crisis of modernity that has resulted in rationali sm and materialism in Europe. The priest has been forced by these crises to tum to Africa as a bastion of innocence where he hopes to build a Christian empire untainted by European rationali sm. 19 However, the new institutions that the missionaries create reflect Weberian structures, a capitalist logic which European society has maintained in the wake of rationalism, which has dealt religion a set-back. The missionar ies' new religion is imposed on the people, and there is no indication that Father Drumont and others look ing for ' non-rationalist' virgin spaces wonder if the local people have their own gods, or even desire the gods of the missionary. The Father Superior himselflater admits that the people are autonomously religious: "These people worshipped God without our help. What matter if they worshipped after their own fashion - by eating one another, or by dancing in the moonlight or by wearing bark charms around their necks? Why do we insist on imposing our customs upon them?" (l SD-51)

Beti 's use of irony about cannibalism draws the reader into a criticall y reflexive stance towards the missionary. The colonial administrator Vidal, on the other hand, reminds the priest that consciousness of God is essential, but it has to be the "Christian" god if Western civilization is to survive in the region (152). Transmitting this Western civilization to Africa through Christianity is a hegemonic endeavour in a number of ways. When Father Superior arrives in Cameroon,

19 Beti, The Poor Christ of Bomba, tr. Gerald Moore (London: Heinemann, 1971): 154. Jesse Mugambi argues: "the rise of secularism in Europe and North America [...] made many evangelicals apprehensive about the future of Christianity and motivated them to evangelize other parts of the world before secularism became world-wide"; 1.N.K. Mugambi, The Biblical Basis for Evangelization (Nairobi: Oxford UP, 1989): 82.

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he discovers to his dismay that the Germans have been there. Presumabl y, German intellectuali sm and militarism would have been difficult for a French citizen to take in the early to mid-1900 s.2o Then, ironically, the missionary who has left France because of rationalism establishes rationalizing structure s such as schools, churche s and administration while in Africa: all part of a largely collabo rative colonial project which bring plagues, forced labour, conscription, floggin gs and arbitrary imprisonment (155 ). Although with time Father Drumont becomes aware that he can no longer continue to fool the people, the religion he has presented to the local people has insulted their humanity and denied them the opportunity to worship the gods of their cho ice. Beti also demonstrates that missionary work is undertaken for self-aggrandizemerit." The Poor Christ is narrated in the voice of a young devotee who witnesses the insatiable desire for power on the part of a priest who insists on imposing his will and authorit y on a people.F The narrator Denni s is privy to the wishes and activities of the mission ary, as well as to his conversations and interaction with the colonial administrator. The Father Superior abandons his congregation for a little while to punish them for their lack of devotion to the faith. He goes off on a tour which becomes an exercise in personal ambition and authority to see if they miss him, but only a few faithful women do. In his egoism, he orders the Evind i people to stop dancin g durin g his visit to their town; as Bjornson points out, this solipsism comes out clearly in the emph asis placed on the person al pronoun 'I' . Go tell them that I could not put up with it. I must have peace now. 'They can start up again tomorrow after I leave, if they must.[. ., ] But I won't have it while I am here, above all on the first Friday of the month .[.. .] I can' t put up with this dancing on the

20 The period covered by these two novels cannot be determin ed by missionary work in Cameroon alone, because one has to consider the political activities that shape Mongo Beti's anticolonial perspective. The events of the novel could be located within the period from the 1940s through to the later part of 1950. 2 1 When Father Le Guen writes to his mother in King Lazarus, he is critical of the power Father Drumont has, and he laments the fact that Father Drumont's failures become the failure of the church (32). 22 Dennis, given to the missionary because his mother is dead, takes the missionary as his father and becomes devoted to him; see Susan Domowitz, "The Orphan in Cameroo n Folklore and Fiction," Research in African Literatures 12.3 (19 8 1): 45. He imagines that the priest is perhaps also an orphan. Domowitz argues that when the mission fails, Dennis experiences orphanhood a second time (King Lazarus, 32).

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First Friday of the month. If I hadn 't arrived, it might be another thing . But to dance like this, so close to a priest of God, and on the First Friday! No , it's beyond bearing."

We also find this desire for power and self-glorification in Father Le Guen in King Lazarus. Although Father Le Guen tries to distance himself from Father Drumont, he wants something dramatic to convince him of his enterprise.I" The illness of the Chief provides this opportunity, and the reader can infer that he rejoices at the tum of events as he writes to his mother: "It seems to me that our Savior has at long last remembered my existence. Surely, it isn't possible that He should remain deaf for ever to the prayers of his humble and faithful servants? How could J ever have faltered in my hope?,,25 The narrative forces the reader to question the judgement of a priest who sees the illness of the chief as an opportunity to press for his conversion but nonetheless decides to leave town even though the houseboy, Gustave, reminds his missionary boss, "you don't abandon a dying friend [.. .] The chief was your close friend, wasn't he?" (41) . Since everyone thinks he will die of his illness, the chief is baptized by Yosifa, his aunt. On his return, the priest, likewise assuming that the chief will succumb to his illness, ignores the illegality of the baptism administered by Yosifa and instead goes ahead to administer extreme unction. In an unusual tum of events, the chief recovers from his illness, and the priest takes the credit. Yosifa and the priest encourage the chief to become a Christian. The distinguishing mark of this new life will be monogamy (I will discuss the problems that result from this in the next section). This alleged conversion of the chief is definitely a high point in the missionary's personal ambition. The significance attached to the conversion of local leaders was a very popular missionary strategy in other parts of Africa .I" All the glory for the tum of events goes to the missionary, a clear indication that the colonial project was carried out for self-aggrandizement. Beti links the church directly to the colonial enterprise. In one instance, a colonial administrator reminds the father that they have the same mission and share the same nationality (Poor Christ, 32-35). Then this administrator is willing to use his power to protect the missionary when a local person attacks the priest, assuring him: '" Have no fear Father, I'll look after you. I've always told you we are both in the 23

Bjornson, The African Questfor Freedom and Identity, 49, 51 (my emphasis).

24

Bjornson, The African Quest for Freedom and Identity, 96. King Lazarus, 31 (my emphasis).

25

26 Elizabeth Isichei , A History of Christianity in Africa (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 1995) ; David Chidester, Religions ofSouth Africa (London: Routledge, 1992).

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same boat. You still don 't believe me, but one day you' ll see'" ( 104). Subsequently, in King Lazarus, Father Le Guen, Father Drumont's assist ant in The Poor Christ serving at Essaza m, receives similar protection from Monsie ur Lequeux, the administrator who sends troops to the area to control local disturbances that have resulted from the chief' s decision to send away all his wives and keep only one. It is quite clear that secular power holds the reins in the colony. The administrator influences the transfer of Father Le Guen to another station in a letter reiterating that the colonial project in its theological, ideological, and administrative perspective is a mission for "motherland-France": " Even though you have never, to our knowledge, been ignorant of the fact, you will, we hope, reaffirm, as we do, the fundamental unity of the mission of which together we have been made responsible by our dear motherland-France, in the midst of these savage peoples." (King Lazarus , 189)

What is at stake here is obvious. The administrator does not want the church to preach and teach about freedom, liberty, equality, or brotherhood [sic]. Such preaching had disturbed colonial lite in South East Asia, where the French inter-married with the local people. (Interestingly, Lequeux himself is French-Vietnamese, the product of such a union.) The administrator thinks that the church's message is capable of turning local peop le into fanatics, helping, for example, to create the radical revo lutionaries who murdered Lequeux 's parents in Hano i. "And do you know where these criminal fanatics came from? From Christian mission-schools, as it happene d. They were Christians [. . .] Christians as only you bloody missio naries know how to tum them out.,m The second way in which church and colonial project are linked is through the local people's clear understanding of their interrelationship. At one of the first stops on his tour, the people tell Father Drumont that they think the priest and the Greek merchant are out for their money (Poor Christ, 20). When Father Drumont rudely disturbs a local dance, the chief defies him, charging that it was because the priest was hungry in his own count ry that he came to his area. The chief's people provide him with food and land, and they also give him their women for three months at a stretch. The latter gesture indicates the suspicions people have about life at the sixa. However, it also ironically places the priest within a precolonial config uration where men could ' give' women to others.

27

King Lazarus, 182 (emphasis in the original).

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Women as targets of change Colonial Christianity, I would argue, used women as targets of change in ways that were not to their benefit. As I indicated earlier, this kind of 'feminist' perspective has been criticized by Oyekan Owomoyela, who argues that some interpreters of Beti society (like Emanuel Konde) rely on outside scholars such as Jeanne Koopman Henn, Peter Geschiere, and Jane I. Guyer to argue that marriage transactions in precolonial society worked to the advantage of men. Owomoyela's position is similar to that of Henri Ngoa, who argued that African women were not oppressed." The issues raised by Ngoa and Owomo yela are based on the gender division oflabour in Beti society, which also demarcated spheres of influence. Owomoyela attacks African scholars who have joined what he calls the Western feminist bandwagon in order to misrepresent African society/? He argues that African societies are not misogynist and patriarchal because they prefer male children, exchange daughters as commodities, exclude females from inheritance, territorialize drudgery for the pleasure of the husbands, and place restrictions on female moral behaviour. He admits that African societies contained "strictures or disabilities for women," but he contends that "since women have always been fully integrated into the life of society in Africa as much as elsewhere, they must have been involved in the evolution and development of social institutions and mores .v'" Thus, the African feminists who stress that African women are oppressed do African women a disservice by promoting "Afrosaxonity." Ifi Amadiume, by contrast, addresses some of the biases of Western scholarship but argues instead that it is the African matriarchal system which has been suppressed by "patriarchal violence - structural and symbolic ."31 Amadiume contends that an examination of systems like the Igbo dual-sex system could correct feminist and Marxist readings of African societies, which cast women in an utterly weak position.V Owornoyela's objection to totalizing scholarship is

apropos, but it is also clear

that scholars working in different fields have uncovered material that demonstrates

28 Henri Ngoa, Non, lafemme africaine n 'etait pas opprimee (Yaounde : Societe Camcrounaise de Publications, 1974).

2~ 30

Owomoycla, The African Difference , 128. Owomoyela , The African Difference, 146-4 7.

31 lfi Amadiume, Reinventing Africa: Matriarchy, Religion and Culture (New York: St. Martin's, 1997): 22, 50. 32 Amadiume , Reinventing Africa , 84-85 .

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how men in African societies dominate w omen.P In other spheres there is evidence for Owomoyela's contention that "Here one is faced with a familiar pattern by which empirical knowledge of African realities yields to derivative misrepresentations originally concocted to legitimize the colonial assault on Africanicity 't'" But on gender issues the scholars whom Owomoyela cites so negatively are careful researchers who, in addition to their dependence on Cameroonian voices, are also criticall y aware of the effects of colonialism and capitalism on this region. Their work cannot be dismissed simply because they are ' outsiders,' nor should critiques of precolonial societies be conflated with those of colonial apologists who claim that "their arrival on the scene replaced unenlightened, and perhaps inhumane practic es, with more enlightened 'civilized' alternatives .v'" Not all 'Western discourse' has inhibited an appreciation of the more complex identities of African women ." Indeed , as Nnaemeka argues, "feminist scholarship has effectively challenged and equipped me to subject disciplinary assumptions, analysis, postulates, and conclusions which inform my work to strict and sustained scrutin y.,,3? This debate is relevant to my argument that Beti's novels in several ways show that in attempting to redress local hegemony, missionar ies target women , but instead of ' helping' them, the church imposes new hegemoni c practices. First, as targets of change, women are subjected to verbal abuse. During his tour, Father Drumont scolds women and pours invective on them again st the practice of polygamy and children born out of wedlock (Poor Christ, 13). He considers polygamy such a serio us sin that he advises a woman whose daught er is married to a polygamist to stop visiting her (62). He compl ains that his parishioners have no respect for monogamy and sexual purity because the people of the area rejoice especially if a child born out of wedlock happen s to be male ( 156). Beti uses this plot-detail to show that the priest has no respect for African customs, a strategy designed to make his French readers in particular take a critical look at the colonial project.

33 Miriam Goheen ' s Men Own the Fields. Women Own the Crops: Gender and Power in the Cameroon Grassfields (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1996) is a more recent account that contributes to the argument that patriarchy was part of precolonial society. 34 Owo moyela, The African Difference, 147. 35 Owo moyela, The African Difference, 149. 36 Anthonia Kalu, "Wo men and the Social Construction of Gender in African Development," Africa Today 43.3 (1996) : 270. 37 Nnaemeka , "Feminism, Rebellious Women and Cultural Boundaries," 8 1.

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While women are targeted by the missionaries to solve the problem of polygamy, Beti suggests that African women might be marginalized but they still have the intellectual resources to improvise in times of crisis. In King Lazarus, Yosifa, the chief's aunt, brings up the idea that the chief should divorce his wives and keep only one. The reader cannot miss the irony here; after all, it is an African woman who baptizes the chief. (At the time Beti wrote these works, the ordination of women was not yet an issue for any African church.) It is hinted that Yosifa might have decided in advance which of the wives the chief should keep, because, after accusing the other wives of causing the chief's illness, she visits Anaba, his youngest wife." In a dramatic tum of events, the chief survives his illness and Yosifa claims that she has received a revelation about what the chief should do. "God let you return to the world of the living, so that you might begin a new life as a Christian. If you wish, after death, to receive the position due to your noble blood, you must agree once and for all, to beeorne a Christian. That is the message which our ancestors send you, with the approval of Akomo himself." (King Lazarus, !O7)

Yosifa's and, I might add, the church's strategy works because the chief's personal well-being and position are apparently more important than his many wives. When the chief accepts that plan although it frustrates many of his wives, the women express outrage: "Fifteen years I've been here, perhaps more. Living in a village I thought of my own, and in a house I supposed to belong to me; looking after a man I imagined to be my husband . Yet in a moment he can come striding in and say to me get out of here, I don't want you anymore, you mean nothing to me, you don't belong here." (King

Lazarus, 120)

The way the women are treated challenges popular beliefs that the institution of polygamy in precolonial societies provided protection for women. The chief annuls their marriage contract by simply telling them to go away. My argument that colonialism targeted women to impose changes on Beti society does not mean that Beti women possessed no agency. However, Beti's narratives suggest that within the institution of marriage the man has power to take as many wives as he needs for productive and reproductive purposes. Beti is clearly

38 Jane Guyer points out that in some cases if people believed that a woman might have eaused the death of a husband, older Beti women were executed if their husband was an important person; Guyer, "Beti Women Inheritance and Marriage Law," 204.

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critical of this arrangement and uses irony to ridicule it. In King Lazarus, Makrita, the first wife, challenges the chief's decision to send all the co-wives away. Makrita and her clan are convinced that the real enemy is the priest, Father Le Guen, but they also have reason to suspect Mekanda of political intriguing. Thus, Makrita and her son confront Mekanda and accuse him of coming up with the idea since he, Mekanda, will benefit if he succeeds the chief. Here again Beti taps into the local practice of levirate marriages .'? Makrita next confronts the missionary for taking sides with Anaba, arguing that the mission of the priest is to protect the flock of God and she Makrita is part of that flock. Instead, Father Le Guen takes sides with Anaba the younger wife, who, according to Catholic teaching , is living in sin. The confrontation that ensues shows that the Cameroonians have not only internalized the faith, but are able to use it in self-defence. Makrita is well aware that Catholic teaching is on her side because she is the first wife. Perhaps hinting at economic exploitation by the church, she reminds Father Le Guen that she is a good Christian who provides him with food; she also recruits new members to the church and the local school. She reminds Father Le Guen - as Gustave the houseboy has done - that in Africa one stands with and for one's friends . When Le Guen tells Makrita that the chief is the one who has made the decision to "marry" Anaba, Makrita brushes these excuses aside to get to the real issue for her as a woman: "I am beautiful too ... truly beautiful ... Your duty is to protect a Christian soul, especially when a pagan, a child of the Satan tries to evict her" (King Lazarus, 126, 127). Mission proselytizing had obviou sly succeeded to some extent , because , even though they are living together as co-wives, Makrita sees Anaba as a "pagan ." Polygamy was a competitive and accumulative system in which men had complete control over wornen.t'' Some conflict of interpretation has emerged, of course, over polygamy, with Laburthe-Tolra describing the situation as the objectification of women and Ngoa arguing that African women were not oppressed .'! Guyer points out that there was clearly an abstraction of gender relationships in Beti society, which spelled out differences between men and women in quality and status, and brought those differences together in marriage for the creation of wealth and wellbeing.F The system placed men in control of crops, although there was a provision 39

Guyer, "Beti Wom en Inheritance and Marriage Law," 208.

40

Guyer, Familyand Farm in Southern Cameroon, 16.

41 42

Referred to in Familyand Farm in SouthernCameroon, 16. Family and Farm in Southern Cameroon, 17.

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for women to control some of the produce from groundnut fields.43 Polygamy boosted the productive possibilit y of men, increased the rate of internal accumulation, and expanded the male exchange network.v' Polygamy, alongside the requisition of workers, protection schemes, and collective labour tax, was one means of recruit ing Iabour.i '' The system allowed men to control women in several ways. Their children were used for economic and military purposes; their daughters were available at a very young age for marriage alliances, a practice that brought wealth to the husband. Women did most of the farm work. Furthermore, ritual practices regularized female fertility, and power ful men with several wives welcomed young men as clients, mintobo, who were permitted sexual access to their women.i" Guyer's 1986 study focused on the inheritance of widows, but it is clear that the combination of polygyny and inheritance of widows transformed marriage into an "idiom of power.,,47 The control of women by their fathers and husbands was clearly a fundamental condition of the polygamous system as it developed. In cultural terms , women were conceived of as a part of a man's wealth (akuma ); he owned them like his other assets (a wage ai) and their activities were under their guardian's more or less total controlj.i '' Beti's fictive account can be placed in perspective because Guyer tells us the church was against all marital arrangements , which impeded the development of monogamy, whereas the state and some Christian chiefs were tolerant of polygamous marriage .t" The church maintained its opposition to the institution, which, Guyer argues, anchored the politi cs of production and accumulation by targetin g women. This approach marginalized women because it further deprived them of the available cultural support systems, however limited.

Family and Farm in Southern Cameroon, 26, 27. Family and Farm in Southern Cameroon, 31. 4 5 Family and Farm in Southern Cameroon, 34. See Djiffack, Mongo Beti: La Quete de la Liberte, 161-64. 46 Guyer, "Beti Women Inheritance and Marriage Law," 199. 47 Guyer, "Beti Women Inheritance and Marriage Law," 197. 48 Guyer, "Beti Women Inheritance and Marriage Law," 199. Among the Wimbum of the North West Province, women were considered economic assets and for that reason, when a young woman became pregnant out of wedlock, the people accused the man responsible for the pregnancy of "spoiling" their daughter. 49 Guyer, Family and Farm in Southern Cameroon, 36. Guyer uses the term polygyny, but I have used the term polygamy in the same sense, to refer to marriage to more than one wife. 43 44

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I will digress a bit here to stress, as Eugene Hillman has done, the fact that polygamy is still a difficult issue for the African church, so that one can appreciate Beti's critique of missionary approaches to the problem.i'' Hillman points out that other Protestant churches have addressed the situation in several ways. In some cases, all the wives and children in a polygamous family were baptized except the husband. Alternatively, baptism was recommended for the husband if he left all his wives except the first. In some cases, it was not necessarily the first but the preferred wife. (These last two examples both appear in King Lazarus.) Some churches baptized all the parties in a polygamous union and prohibited the taking of additional wives. In other cases, converts were baptized with no requirements or conditions.'!

50 Eugene Hillman's study, which is aimed at fostering evangelism and church growth, argues that the early church's teaching on marriage was derived from Graeco-Rornan culture rather than the New Testament; Hillman , Polygamy Reconsidered: African Plural Marriage and the Christian Churches (Maryknoll NY : Orbis, 1975): 30. In a letter written to the missionary Boniface, Pope Gregory II advised that if a man had a wife who could no longer fulfil the functions of a wife, that person could marry another woman . There is no indication that, if a man could no longer fulfil his duties as a husband , then the wife could also marry. Later on, the Council of Trent voted to enforce monogamy. For our purposes, the action taken by priests in Beti's novels can be traced to the Altitudo of 1535 issued by Pope Paul III and usually called the "Privilege of the Faith." It was based on an interpretation 01'1 Cor. 7:10-15 and on the Petrine privilege. The Pope recommended that a polygamist who wanted to receive the privilege of the faith had to put away other wives and keep only the first one; Hillman, Polygamy, 28. The decree was reinforced with Romani Pontificus, also known as Constitutio Piana, issued by Pope Pius V in 1571, and Gregory XIII extended its provision to the dissolution of monogamous marriages in cases where one of the partners was separated and moved away, as often happened in slave marriages; Hillman, Polygamy, 29. The decree 's application to foreign missionaries is often traced to Pope Pius XII, who extended it to cover "salvation of souls." Hillman points out that the Anglican Bishop of Natal, John Colenso, was critical of church policy towards polygamists who had confessed the faith: "I must confess that I feel strongly on this point that the unusual practice of enforcing the separation of wives from their husbands, upon their conversion to Christianity, is quite unwarrantable, and opposed to the plain teaching of our Lord. It is putting new wine in old bottles, and placing a stumbling block, which He has not set, directly in the way of receiving the Gospel "; quoted in Hillman, Polygamy, 53. See also John William Colen so, Ten Weeks in Natal: A Journal of a First Visitation Among the Colonists and the Zulu Kajirs ofNatal (Cambridge: Macmillan, 1855): 140. 51 Hillman, Polygamy, 3 I. See also Lyndon Harries, "A Christian Marriage in African Society," in Survey of African Marriage and Family, ed. Arthur Phillips (London: Oxford UP, 1953): 329-59. During the time I worked for the Cameroon Baptist Convention (1972-85), church policy barred polygamists from church membership. However, in actual practice , some churches accepted the wives and children but not the husband. Johnson Ngwang (not his real name) criticized this injustice and openly made fun of the fact that his family financed the budget of the church. His

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ELIAS BONGMBA In King Lazarus, the clans of the Essazam oppose the decision of the chief to

divorce his other wives. In an effort to preserve the marriage alliances that were so common among the Beti people, they take steps to make sure their kinswomen are not thrown out. This arrangement is illustrated when Medzo marries the chief's brother. In a provocative dance performance, Medzo sings and mocks the wives who have been ordered to leave, and the members of the other clans take this as a challenge. A melee breaks out because the people resent such mockery. Father Le Guen tries to bring about calm but is also beaten in the process. The colonial administrator sends troops to the area to control the situation, following to personally supervise the investigation of the unrest. The narrative suggests the social dislocation that will occur if the chief's decision to send away all his wives except one is carried out. The members of the different clans react to save the marriages of their sisters and to maintain a long-standing tradition of political alliances. The situation indicates that the displaced women are the victims. This is what the missionary who wants to cash in on the conversion of the chief does not understand.V Beti's novels show that institutional religion victimizes women by regimenting their lives and that some members of the mission staff systematically exploit women sexually.V These men concoct excuses to keep the women there as long as they can. There is no supervision from the Father Superior, who has not seen the quarters where the women live since the time the building was constructed. The demise of the sixa begins when Father Drumont's tour party arrives at Teba. Zacharia's wife follows the party, finds out what is going on, and attacks the culprits in public. When

position was relayed to me by Martha Ntemi, who was a deaconess in the Wanti Baptist Church where I was pastor. At Ntumbaw, my predecessor, the Reverend David Tangko, admitted all traditional rulers such as the Chief (NkjU) and sub-chiefs (Fais) into membership along with their wives as long as they confessed faith in Jesus. People who were already polygamists at the time of their conversion were allowed to become members. We followed this practice when I was pastor at Ntumbaw BaptistChurch from 1973 to 1975. None of these measures has solved the problem. 52 John Erickson points out that "the clans [did] not protest the chiefs conversion out of any lofty principle, but because the conversion threatens clan privileges and opposesthe self-indulgent decadence in which the tribe has wallowed for several years"; Erickson, Nommo: African Fiction in French South of the Sahara (York SC: French Literature Publications, 1979): 172. Erickson's interpretation introduces a problematical pro-Christian inflection when he indicates that the rites the Essazam people were fighting to reinstate in the wake of this crisis were "sensual" and "hedonistic" (173-74). 53 I do not think that the narrative at this point is intended to give us a general view of African men's sexuality, or the way they treat women. The narrative depicts particular levels of exploitation and control.

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they get back to the mission station, the priest beats the women and makes them tell the full story. He does not beat the men. The boy Raphael, one of the priest's favourites, exploits most of the sixa women and passes them on to other men for money. A doctor's report paints a chilling picture of institutional brutality : many of the sixa women are infected with syphilis at a rate higher than in the general population . Since these infections are in their early stages, the women must have come to the sixa healthy. The doctor recommends treatment but Father Drumont decides to dismiss the women without it, even forcing out some of them whose marriage plans have crumbled because they have lived at the sixa for a long time. The narrative is critical of the "mission compound" and its pol itics of production and accumulation on the margins of the neocolonial state. 54 With the collapse of his empire and counter-project ofmodemity, the priest beats the women, telling them: " You have spoiled my sixa.,,55 Beti's narrative seeks to demonstrate that Beti women are targets of change yet remain an oppressed group . Early on in The Poor Christ, the reader is given a hint when Dennis indicates that Zacharia is excited about going on tours because these provide him with an opportunity to exploit women. Zacharia has a low opinion of women - he thinks that it is they who seduce men (14). When the scandal with Zacharia erupts , he and his friends criticize his wife because they believe that she is interfering with her husband 's "pleasure," since the sixa woman is unmarried (130). In King Lazarus, minor characters like Chris and Maurice are vehicles for Beti's criticism of the oppression of women.P " Chris mocks the ancestors: "One of the

54 In many places, the "mission compound" was a symbol of the new morality introduced by missionaries. The critique here is that promiscuity was far greater in the holy city than in the outside world. In many places in Cameroon, mission compounds were often fenced off from outsiders and for that reason are exclusionary spaces even to those who belonged to the same church. In Cameroon, those of us with professional status in churches stay at mission compounds when we travel. Although we have come to see it as a convenience, it grants us elite status, whether we admit it or not. In my Bible-school days when we went into the town of Ndu, our friends called us, jokin gly, "boo manka" ' children from the fence.' Rumours about sex scandals, either at the then Bible school or at the secondary school in the same compound, always aroused much concern in the town. 55 My emphasis.

56 Dorothy S. Blair argues that these extra plots militate against Beti' s intention to demonstrate that mission work in Cameroon had failed; Blair, African Literature in French: A History of Creative Writing in Frenchfrom West and Equatorial Africa (London: Cambridge UP, 1976): 215. Contra Blair, it is clear that in King Lazarus the plots where we have Chris and Maurice are integral to the critiques of colonialism and of 'oppressive' precolonial customs.

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reasons I've always had respect for polygamy is that our ancestors handed it down to us" (King Lazarus , 65). There is an anti-Negritude element in Chris's critique of Maurice : "You call yourself a revolutionary. At the same time you're lost in admiration for those crapulous old dotards representing the most shameful, disgusting elements surviving from our history ... Iazy, greedy, senile maroons, nattering away aimlessly." (101)

When Chris himself treats a woman poorly, Bitama scolds him. "Listen Chris you can 't treat her like dirt just because she is illiterate. All young girls deserve some respect, even when they're uneducated and a bit on the ju ngly side" (133).57

Towards an emancipatory gender discourse Emancipatory gender discourse would include raising gender consciousnes s, which recognizes and reaffirms othemess.l" While serious considerat ion of gender in Africa raises issues that I cannot fully address here, I have argued that Beti uses a variety of narrative strategies to demonstrate that precolonial and colonial structures oppressed wornen." Beti's narratives invite a critical dialogue on polygamyf? Such 57 The southern part of Cameroon has been open to missionary influence for a long time. Walter Trobish, a Protestant missionary to Cameroon, has published widely on marriage. Trobish's writings on the subj ect started as conversations with young Cameroonians and were later published as I Loved a Girl and I Loved a Young Man. Subsequent pamphlets addressed various marital problems including polygamy. In pamphlet no. 2, titled My Wife Made Me a Polygamist (Downe rs Grove IL: Inter Varsity Press, 1971), men again targeted women. This time an individual blamed his wife for making him a polygamist. Trobish argues that polygamists should be counseled because excommunication is an unloving and easy way out of the problem (29). His position is that if we leave things the way they are, polygamy will eventually disappear, and has suggested that the church in Africa should focus on issues that are more pressing than polygamy (37). 58 Christopher Miller argues: "The theoretical truth is that gender is not merely a supplementary issue that can be added on to a critical approach. [...] Gender as an issue and femin ist critici sm in particular invite a reapprai sal of literature and culture from the ground up"; Miller, Theories of Africans: Francophone Literature and Anthropology in Africa (Chicago : U of Chicago P, 1990): 264.

59 The literature on the participation and status of women does not focus only on household econom ics but is increasingly large in 'development' economics. See, for example , Margaret Hay & Sharon Stichter, ed. African Women South of the Sahara (London: Longman, 1984); Lucy E. Greevey, Women Farmers in Africa: Rural Development in Mali and the Sahel (Ithaca NY: Syracuse UP, 1986); Richard Lapchick & Stephanie Urdang, Oppression and Resistance: The Struggle of Women in Southern Africa (Westport CT: Greenwood, 1982); Deborah Bryceson, ed. Women Wielding the Hoe: Lessons from Rural Africa for Feminist Theory and Development Practice (Oxford : Berg, 1995).

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a dialogue should also include issues such as partnership in marriage, the place and role of women in production and reproduction, education, and violence against women in all its forms. Implicitly, his novels raise issues now in current debate. Contrary to the Beti (the ethnic group) proverb , which holds that "women have no mouth," silence on gender issues in Africa is finally being broken.v' The Cameroonian writer Calixthe Beyala points out that woman must speak to destroy disempowering silence.F Awa Thiam, whose La parole aux Negresses was instrumental in shaping the debate on women and silence, has said : Black women have been silent for too long. Are they now beginning to find their voices? Are they claiming the right to speak for themselves? Is it not high time that they discovered their own voices, that - even if they are unused to speaking for themselves - they now take the floor, if only to say that they exist, that they are human beings - something that is not always immediately obvious - and that, as such they have a right to liberty, respect and dignity.v'

Cameroonian and other African women are speaking in different ways about such issues. The Senegalese novelist Mariama Ba has pointed out that, in writing, women are using books as weapon/" 60 There is no doubt that polygamy works well for some, especially the men at the centre of it. Beti's novels, just like Claude Meillassoux 's Marxist anthropology, show quite clearly that women have been and are victims of the system; Meillassoux, Maidens . Meal and Money: Capitalism and the Domestic Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981): 78. The reaction of the local people in Le roi miracule to the loss of place in the palace if their relatives were evicted confirms Meillassoux's observation that "A wife is chosen not because of her own qualities but as a result of an opportunity which is created by the network of alliances to which her community belongs" (63). If one takes into consideration the argument that large families enhance productivity, and make provision for women who would have lived lives as single women, Meillassoux 's comment is very telling: "Women despite the crucial role in reproduction, never appear as vectors of the social organization . They are hidden behind the men, behind the fathers, brothers and/or husbands [...J This is not a natural condition but one which results from changing historical circumstances, and always linked to the exploitation of women's reproductive functions" (75). 61 See also Odile Cazenave, "The White Woman in Interracial Couples in Mongo Beti's Dzewatama Novels," in Critical Perspectives on Mongo Beti, ed. Stephen H. Arnold (Boulder CO: Lynne Reinner, 1998): 235--49, and Christin Makward & Odile Cazenave, 'The Other's Other: Francophone Women's Writing," Yale French Studies 75 (1988): 190-207.

Calixthe Beyala, Tu / 'appelleras Tango (Paris: Stock, 1988). Quoted in Irene Assiba Almeida, Francophone Women Writers (Gainesville : U of Florida P, 1994): 6. 64 Irene Assiba Almeida, Francophone Women Writers, 6. 62 63

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African feminist thought is not a threat but an inspiration for all interested in emancipatory discourse.P In her ground-breaking essay on feminism in Africa, Penelope Roberts argued that social feminism contributed significantly to the debate by "[conceptualizing] gender divisions as a set of social relations which have historically and in all known cultures been based on the domination of men and the subordination of women.Y" Resistance is being mounted against such domination in some parts of Cameroon. As Mark DeLancey has pointed out, awareness of "inequalities between different sections of the population also include the increasing awareness of women of their second-class status in the Cameroon polity and economy.'t''?

In this regard, Miriam Goheen argues that the Cameroon Association of Female Jurists is committed to fighting gender discrimination'f and that in Cameroon's North West Province younger women are fighting oppressive marriages by rejecting subjection to men.69 While it is premature to claim that there is a movement at this time, Goheen argues that the counter-discourse is growing and that women do not merely want to contribute to the accumulative power of men.?" Beti's novels, with their recognition of the imperative for discursive spaces where men and women can participate in the formation and building of their own identities, acknowledge implicitly that it is necessary to start a dialogue among women - and with others who are willing to embark on an emancipatory journey. 65 Jean Comaroff and, recently, Miriam Goheen have put forth compelling claims that understanding the complexity of gendered relations should be a multidisciplinary and ongoing activity which should foster dialogue with women in their respective localities; Comaroff, Body ofPower, Spirit ofResistance; Goheen, Men Own the Fields, Women Own the Crops, 1996. Finally, Chandra Talpade Mohanty has cautioned against Western scholars using distinctions about the West and 'Third-World' women because such distinctions very often end up being "ourselves undressed"; Mohanty, "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses," Boundary 12.313.1 (Spring-Fall 1984): 337. Distinctions of this kind do not rule out the significant role played by scholars and feminists from the West. The words of Eugenia Herbert on this matter are cautionary as well as poignant. "Our own ideas of gender are, if anything, much more problematic than they have been in other societies; we find ourselves still troubled by the notion that masculine and feminine are not fixed categories but vary according to context"; Herbert, Iron, Gender, and Power : Rituals ofTransformation in African Societies (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993): 236. 66 Penelope Roberts, " Feminism in Africa: Feminism and Africa," Review ofAfrican Political Economy 27-28 (1983): 175, 176. 67 Mark W. DeLancey, Cameroon : Dependence and Independence (Boulder CO: Westview, 1989): 169. 68 Cameroon Association of Female Jurists 1996: 181. 69 Goheen, Men Own the Fields, Women Own the Crops, 178, 179. 70 Goheen, Men Own the Fields, Women Own the Crops, 186.

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Colonizing the Queer Some Problems in Curating South Africa's First National Gay and Lesbian Art Exhibition Joan Bellis

' They cannot represent themselves ; they must be represented.' (Karl Marx : The Eighteenth Brumaire ofLouis Bonaparte)

'The will to influence is at the core of any exhibition .' (Bruce W. Ferguson: "Exhibition Rhetorics " in Thinking About Exhibitions)

O

N 24 JANUARY 1996, GAY RIGHTS RITES RE-WRITES, the first

South African national Gay and Lesbian art exhibition, opened at the Oliewenhuis Art Museum in Bloemfontein in the Free State prov ince. It had previously been shown in Cape Town and was to go on to Johannesburg in March. This exhibition had been conceived as a contribution to the debate surrounding the "sexual orientation clause" in the (then) Interim Constitution. The new South African Constitution, adopted by the Constitutional Assembly on 7 May and by Parliament on 8 May 1996, states: The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more ground s, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation. age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth. (ch. 2, §9.3; my emphasis)

GAY RIGHTS RITES RE-WRITES had been sponsored by the Royal Netherlands

Embassy as a contribution to human rights in South Africa. It was curated jointly by Wessel van Huyssteen, at that time principal of the Visual Arts and Crafts Academy in Germiston, and myself, a lecturer in English literature at the University of the

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Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Though primarily concerned in teaching Romanticism, the Victorians and modernism, along with feminism and some queer studies, I have a long-standing interest in art history and contemporary visual arts in South Africa. This was my first attempt at curatorship, a task entered into rather impulsively out of a desire to contribute, as a lesbian, to the debate on gay rights . Indeed, my decision might be described as almost hubristic, as I had no idea of either the practical difficulties of curatorship or the problematical nature of curating itself. The exhibition was a watershed in my own understanding of identity politics and of presentation, representation and misrepresentation in the context of an exhibit ion and its reception. My essay, therefore, though only incidentally, describes - if not a learning curve for me personally - an increase in perception of the difficulties inherent in our project. It presents the questions that arose, more than any answers found . It describes disclosure, rather than offering closure. It theorizes an exhibition after the event. The Oliewenhuis was formerly the residence of the Administrator of the Orange Free State and, as such, is associated with the apartheid era. It is a large pseudo-Cape Dutch building which stands in formal gardens. It houses a permanent art collection and hosts various visiting exhibitions. It might be assumed to be autonomous (it has its own board and a director, in 1996 Stefan I-Iundt) but is in fact under the control

and authority of the Director of the National Museum, Dr Chris Engelbrecht, who administers all public museums in Bloemfontein. We completed hanging the exhibition (some 120 works by 52 artists) in the early afternoon of24 January: it is no easy task to hang a mixed exhibition in an unfamiliar space so that the works 'speak' to each other, and we were tired but satisfied with the final arrangement. At this point Dr Engelbrecht arrived, and Stefan Hundt showed him around the exhibition, which occupied the whole of the ground floor. My co-curator and I were not invited to join them, or even introduced. Engelbrecht then left, and we were informed that the exhibition was to be hastily re-arranged before the official opening that night. After the opening there would be further "fine tuning ." A number of works were to be removed from the large rooms and quarantined in a small comer room, the doors of which were to be kept closed and to bear the legend that these works were unsuitable for sensitive viewers. It was made quite clear to us that negotiation was out of the question and that failure to comply would mean that the exhibition would not open at all. We were faced with the difficult choice between being silenced, as gay / lesbian people so often have been - an aspect of our history

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against which this exhibition was designed, in part, to protest or designed to rectify or to possibly collude in our own misrepresentation . The marginalized and indicted works all involved some degree of nudit y and most featured male genitalia - a case of the penis being barred, ironically, by the phallus. These works formed a proportionally small but integral part of a fairly large exhibition: clustered together, however, and especially to those who subsequentl y visited no other room, they created a deliberately misleading impression. Exhibitions in general have been described as "narratives which use art objects as elements in institutionalized stories that are promoted to an audience."! Our exhibition, one that attempted to enable the gay I lesbian artist to speak out on identity and subjectivity, was to be colonized , or to be assimilated to an institutionalized presentation of deviance promoted by Dr Engelbrecht, to a conservative, heteronormative audience . The concentration of erotic images, removed from the context of the exhibition as a whole, encouraged the perpetuation ofthe view of gay I lesbian people as sex-crazed , promiscuous deviants. This was reflected in a number of comments in the Visitors' Book, such as "Dit Iyk of j ulie 'n obsessie het met geslags-organe" and "Shame, is sex (sic) al waarn a julie kan dink?" (' It looks as if you are obsessed with sexorgans' ; ' Shame, is sex all you can think about?'). Engelbrecht may have sought to justify the excisions or relocations in terms of decorum and obscenity, but they had the effect of powerfully reinforcing a stereotype and of re-inscribing misrepresentation upon the artists ' self-presentations. Subsequent to, and largely consequent upon , Engelbrecht's interventions, the police and repre sentati ves of several churche s visited the exhibition, though they did not disclose their identit y or introduce themselves, let alone show willin gness to discuss anything. Accordin g to Die Volksblad (1 February 1996), these included the Dutch Reformed Church 's Free State Synod's Kommissie vir Leer en Aktu ele Sake (Commission for Doctrine and Current Affairs) and an anti-pornography organization. The newspaper claimed that complainants intended to approach the (then) Free State premier, Patrick Lekota, to take action against the exhibition : a clergyman said he wished to obliterate some of the works of art with an aerosol paint-spray ("hy het Ius om met 'n sp uitkannetjie van die kunswerke dood te verJ'). Some clergymen and their followers simply objected to a gay exhibition in principle, without seeing the works. There were, we were told, complaints to EngelI Bruce W: Ferguson, "Exhibition Rhetorics: Material Speech and Utter Sense," in Thinking about Exhibition, ed. Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson & Sandy Nairne (London & New York: Routledge, 1996): 175.

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brecht and Hundt, letter-writing campaigns, attack s from the pulpit. The press took up the matter with headlines such as (I translate) "Gay Art Unleashes Storm in City.,,2 Visitors rushed up the hill to see the exhibition - or at least the cordonedoff part of it. Althou gh 1 arranged walkabouts, lectures and a panel discussion which included an art historian from the University of the Free State and some of the participating artists, and was available for discussion or quest ions each day for over a week, few hostile viewers chose to hear what the curators had to say, or to read any access material. Nevertheless, this was the best-attended visiting exhibition that the Oliewenhuis had had. After my departure from Bloemfontein, attempt s were made to have GAY RIGH TS RITES RE-WRITES closed. A meeting of the Oliewenhuis committee voted to keep it open - a courageous stand on the part of the assenting members . There was, however, a strong possibility that Engelbrecht's board would override their recommendation. At th is point , Mark Gevisser of the Mail & Guardian was instrumental in informing the office of the Deputy Minister of Arts and Culture, Mrs Brigitte Mabandla, of the threat. She intervened, pre-empting a decision by Engelbrecht's board: to close the exhibition was deemed unconstitutional. One wonders if Dr Engelbrecht and his associates appreciated the fact that an exhib ition designed to draw attention to a specific clause in the Interim Constitution hal, in fact, succeeded in testin g that Constitution and had become a small victory for the Bill of Right s. Mrs Mabandla's decision was interpreted in Bloemfontein as an erosion of local autonomy. According to Die Volksblad, Mrs Mabandla's decision, one based on purely constitutional grounds, was later regretted by her when she was given a description of some of the works: "Toe dit blyk dat say self nog nie die uitstelling gesien het waaroor sy die briefgeskryfhet nie, is die omstrede eksplisiete werk van

Steven Cohen aan haar beskryf' (' When it appeared that she had not herself seen the exhibition about which she had written the lettter, the controversial explicit work of Steven Cohen was described to her '). The article quotes the deputy minister' s alleged reply: "Ek is stom. Ek het nie woorde nie. Ek is gese dit is in gay-uitstalling, maar het geen beskrywing gekry waarooer dit gaan nie" (' I am dumbfounded. r am speechless. 1 was told it was a gay exhibition but was given no description of its content ' j.' At this point it would seem that the Deputy Minister's confidence in her previous decision to uphold our constitutional rights wavered before concepts such

2

3

Die Volksblad (\ February 1996). Die Volksblad (2 Feb ruary 1996).

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as obscenity and censorship. She did not ask the curators or the director of the Oliewenhuis for their interpretation of Cohen 's work, or ask to see a photo of it. It appears that her response was taken by the authorities as tacit approval of their decision to relocate the exhibition upstairs and away from the area used for visitin g exhibition s, to make room for a more innocuous exhibition. We were not consulted , or even told, of this move. So far, the present essay may seem largely anecdotal. I would, however, like to suggest that official local interventions in Bloemfontein constituted , from one point of view, a deft act of colonizing our exhibition in order to re-inscribe hegemoni c assumptions which are heteronormative, if not homophobic, and to reinforce harmful stereotypes of the ' homosexual.' Of course, the public museum, like other institutions which Althus ser calls "ideological state apparatuses ," is a fiercely contended territory. It was no accident that we chose to take GA Y RI GHTS RITES REWRITES to the Oliewenhuis - it was to be a kind of Trojan horse within a bastion of white Afrikaner conservatism. Earlier we had attempted to get the Castle in Cape Town, a design thwarted by the pressures applied by religious fundamentalists to the Commandant in charge. (The venue eventually found for the exhibition in Cape Town was the Martin Melck House, a national monument dating back to the seventeenth century.) As Bruce Ferguson has said of art exhibitions and museums in general , "An unexamined museological tradition of functioning for a wealthy class is in urgent confrontation with contemporary demands for social relevance from a renewed democratic impul se.?" Ostensibl y, events in Bloemfontein demon strated the relative strength or superiority of those in position s of local authority and showed how cultural imperialism successfully bears upon forms of cultural production . Yet those events may not only demonstrate successful control of the museum's agenda they may also reveal fear or 'panic behaviour,' fear of 'the Other ' and fear of disempowerment. Many critics, especially those writing within critical anthropology, cultural studies and postcolonial studies, have shown that there is a need for an 'Other ' on the part of those in power to reinforce a sense of self and self-esteem. The less confident those at the centre are that their position is sustainable, the more this dynamic becomes a necessity. One might borrow the terminolog y used by Stallybrass and White 5 and say that the self-styled 'high' has need of the so-called ' low' precisely to confirm that it is 'high.' ' High' and ' low' reciprocally entail one another. 4

Ferguso n, " Exhibition Rhetorics," 178.

Peter Stallybrass & Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (London: Methuen, 1986). 5

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By showing the ' evidence' and entrenching the stereotype of the gay person as displaying repulsive 'lowness,' Engelbrecht effectively demonstrated and retrenched hierarchy and hegemonic heteronormativity, as the worthy, moral, natural and divinely ordained ' high.' There is an emotional need for the deployment of such a strategy among sectors of the white South African population, particularly among those who supported the ideology and structures of apartheid and who now feel themselves to be increasingly marginalized by the former colonized and oppressed peoples. To the new 'low,' stigmatized as part of, or party to, the apartheid regime, a captive subaltern group, or representatives of a subculture, such as the 'homosexual' (perceived as ' low' because 'sinful ' in theological terms and 'pathological' or 'perverse' in medical discourses) is a welcome and useful replacement for the traditinal white South African 'Other' comprised of indigenous African people . Engelbrecht's tactics may seem a successful show of strength, but they also demonstrate the need for the 'low' in terms of the 'high 's' dependence upon it. There is surely a desire , however unconscious, for compensation in those white supremacists in Bloemfontein who witnessed, with horror, the sight ofAfrican youths dancing in triumph on the toppled statue oNerwoerd. What better antidote than finding a new ' low' to - metaphorically tread underfoot. Two comments from Gayle Rubin's "Thinking Sex" are useful here . She remarks that "In modem, western, industrial societies, homosexuality has acquired much of the institutional structure of the ethnic group.?" Not only has this structure been acquired by gay and lesbian communities through their self-constitution as a subculture and through the practice of identity politics, a necessary phase in any concerted liberation struggle, but such a collective identity is also thrust upon gays in an effort to stigmatize, marginalize and control. Homophobia comes as easil y to the practitioners of apartheid as does racism . Secondly, Rubin writes that "disputes over sexual behaviour often become the vehicles for displacing social anxieties and discharging their attendant emotional intensity."? Robert Mugabe's use of homophobia in Zimbabwe as a way to distract attention from various social and economic problems in the past few years is a case in point - as was our experience in Bloemfontein . I might add that in South Africa apartheid (and the struggle aga inst it) and 6 Gayle S. Rubin, "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality," in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Henry Abelove, Michele Barale & David Halperin (New York & London: Routledge, 1993): 17. 7 Rubin, "Thinking Sex," 4.

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the issue of homosexuality have been linked - first by the apartheid regime itself, in that our Stonewall, the Forest Town raid of January 1966, took place at the height of Verwoerd's clampdown on the liberation movements and his formalization of apartheid [when] the the South African authorities were consolidating Afrikaner 'C hristian National' control over the country, expelling from the laager anything that was deemed threatenin g to white civilization .f A police circular at this time warned that 'there are indications that homosexuality and gross indecency is being practised between male persons throughout the country and that offenders are now pursuing an organized modus operand i."

This implicat ion of conspiracy led to the draconian anti-homosexuality legislat ion proposed in 1967 and 1968. The reaction of those in Bloemfontein who attacked GAY RIGHTS RITES RE-WRITES can therefore be seen as both a relocation of the

political dynamic of ' otherness' from black to gay and a continuation of the apartheid mindset. Furthermore, reactions to GAY RIGHTS RITES RE-WRITES in Bloemfontein were an inadvertent revel ation of fascination with the 'Other.' A number of exhibited works, most notably those of Steven Cohen, had a strong carni valesque quality. Stallybrass and White, in their pertinent application of Bakhtin ian theory, have shown that the bourgeo is respons e to the transgressive and ' low' carn ivalesque is characteristically an amalgam of repugnance and fascination. Voyeuristic glimps es of what must be denounced as indecorous, disgusting and subversive are also exc iting and titillating. Simon Watney refers to "repressed homosexual desire turning back compulsively against its own forbidden object.t"" The ' low' is in fact a prime eroticized and fetishiz ed component of the imaginative or fantasy lives of the ' high.' There is a need to contain the doubl e threat of otherness - its fearfulness and its forbidden fascination. Gordon Froud's witty assemblage, exhib ited on GAY RIGHTS RITES RE- WRITES , A False-Bottomed Suitca se fo r Robert Mugab e (Fig. 14 below)

makes the point. The main compartment of the suitcase contains unexceptional male clothing. Tucked into the inside of the lid of the case are several (heterosexual)

8 Mark Gevisser, "A Different Fight for Freedom," in Defi ant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Afr ica, ed. Mark Gevisser & Edwin Cameron (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1994): 30.

Gevisser, "A Different Fight for Freedom," 31. Simon Watney, Policing Desire: Pornography. Aids and the Media (London: Cassell, 1989): 43. 9

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pornographic magazines . The false bottom of the case falls away to reveal what has been hidden - a fibreglass homoerotic male torso . Froud's work presents the idea (and he is responding to Mugabe's outburst at the 1995 Harare Bookfair against "homosexuals" whom Mugabe described as "worse than pigs and dogs") that underlying many vociferous outbursts against a gay lifestyle is a rapt facination with indeed, possibly an attraction to - the very thing condemned, which is why it is perceived as threatening and requiring containment. The comments of a number of visitors to the Oliewenhuis, at least in the early days of the exhibition, were of this strident, visceral (even hysterical) kind - for example "Afstootlik' ('repulsive'); "siek" ('sick'); "Dit is ajskuwelik, en dit is 'n groot sonde!" ('It is abominable and it is a great sin'); "Dit is walglik, Goed opgevo ede mense wil nie na sekere van hierdie goed kyk nie" ('It is nauseating. Well brought up people do not wish to look at some of these things'); "Sies man! Vrieslik" ('For shame, man! Disgusting!'); "Aaklik" ('Vile'). It was noteworthy that many of the writers of such comments only looked at the "quarantine room" created by Dr Engelbrecht. Ironically, the containment of these works heightened a sense both of their transgre ssiveness and of their fascination . Stallybrass and White point out "that what is socially peripheral is also frequently symbolically central." , , The Bloemfonteiners' pollution behaviour and 'sex panic' underlines a kind of negative symbiosis between ' high' and 'low,' analogous to the fear of 'going native' in the former colon ies. (Conrad's Marlow, in Heart of Darkness, perfectly embodies the mixture of revulsion and fascination produced by, and seen in, such a transgressive figure as Kurtz.) Watney discusses this phenomenon in terms of Freud's "reaction-formation," which is "developed to defend the individual against some oppressed emotion within him or herself, or else from other displaced or strictly speaking phobic anxieties projected onto gay men.,,12 He suggests, for instance, that displaced misogyny or contempt and hatred for a feminine passivity may be focused on gay men; or that, in some cases , "an over-riding sense of shame concerning excretory functions may be projected onto men (or women) whose sexuality seems to expose or even celebrate the object of disgu st which, Freud reminds us, always bears the imprint of desire." In such cases, the queer artist who 'lets it all hang out' provokes extraordinary acts of unwitting self-exposure in the homophobic, who characteristically justify their

II

Stallybrass & White, The Politics and Poetics ojTransgression , 5.

12

Watney , Policing Desire, 50.

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moral terms : for example, by protecting the young from

corruption.

Many comments in the Visitors ' Book invoked religion to ratify prejudices that saw homophobia as righteous and divinel y sanctioned: "En verlos ons van die Bose. Amen!" ('and deli ver us from Evil. Amen! '); "Sodorn and Gomorah [sic] all over again. Look what happened to them! "; "Sal Jesus dit go edkeur?!"; "Geniet dit in die

hel julle mowwe" ('Would Jesus approve?!'; ' Enjoy it in Hell you fags'). Mystification is frequently part of the underpinning of colonizing strategies. Religion is one of the social forces that functions to regulate stigmatized populations. Gayle Rubin writes that All these hierachie s of sexual value - religious, psychiatric and popular - function in much the same way as do ideological systems of racism, ethnocentrism, and religious chauvinism. They rationalize the well-being of the sexually privileged and the adversity of the sexual rabble. P

Resistance to the exhibition in Bloemfontein was aided by the transgressi ve aspect of the queer art on display, which pro voked the authorities to mobilize support to repair a fractured or potentially fractured order throu gh recuperation. (I use ' queer' not as a synonym for gay - as the follo wing paragraphs show) . To this end , the police, the churches and the press were called in. Th e media not onl y record resistance to main stream thought, when it is note worth y, but situate it within the dominant framework of meaning so as to create resistance to the dissident and to consolidate consensus in what Durkheim calls the dominant "representation collectives." The media both exploit and colonize subcultures and their attempts at disruption or change. They are involved not only with the diffusion of news about the confrontational, but with its defusing. The mass media must be "understood above all as an agency of collective fantasy."!" Yet the coverage in the newspapers sent an unprecedented number of people to see the artworks and , though some came to censure and to affirm consensual norms, many stayed to reconsider. One local paper took an opinion poll on gay rights, the result of which seemed to suggest that a

IJ 14

Gayle Rubin 'T hinking Sex," 13. Watney, Policing Desire, 3.

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significant number of minds might have been changed'f - so that the colonizing or policin g of a cultural event may be said to have not been wholl y successful and may, indeed, have been counter-productive. I remarked that host ility and fascination fastened particularly upon the works by queer artists such as Steven Cohen and Andrew Putter. At this point I need to distinguish the queer artist from the gay / lesbian artist - an issue central in recent gay and lesbian studies and one that has direct bearing on issues of colonization in this specific context. In order to achieve maximal inclusivity we, for the purposes of this exhibition, defined ' gay art' simpl y as art produ ced by gay / lesbian artists - it need not have specific or overt political , polemical or erotic content. For some participating queer artists, the gay / lesbian artist who submitted a landscape, for example, was the equivalent of the marcher in the Gay Pride march who participates with a brown-paper bag on his /her head. For some gay /lesbian artist s, the ' in your face' effrontery of the queer artist is discreditable and as embarrassing as the media 's inevit able choice of the image of the drag queen in the Gay Pride march to represent the entire gay / lesbian community. There was a tenden cy in each group to see the other's self-presentation and repres entations as, to whatever degree, misrepresentation . The re was a sense among gay / lesbian artists that queer artists were supplying further gro unds for acts of control, and being provocative. Queer artists felt the exhibition ought to be an arena for conflict-politics and an opportunity for challenging majorit y con sensual values. Gay / lesbian artists are frequentl y seen by the queer as an assimilationalist who is so eager to ' buy into' mainstream society that they wi ll compromise in exchange for institutionalization or inclusion in that which has constructed them as the marginalized or proscribed 'Other.' The lesbian / gay artist may argue in favour of celebrating a common (essential) humanity and in favour of reconciliation and understanding. Rather than celebrating a subculture and making a valorizing virtue of subaltern standing, the gay / lesbian artist will stress an inclusive communal culture and strive toward universalizing - "see, we are really like you" - in order to modify the hegemonic hostile common sense of ' gay' and to break down what Rubin calls "sexual apartheid.t'l'' This can be viewed by the queer as an over-anxious lack of pride, a desire to 'belong' at any price or as sleeping with the enemy. The queer artist is affronted by those lesbian / gay artists who claim that their sexual orientation is irrelevant to their art.

15

According to Ricardo Dunn in an article in the Mail & Guardian (9 February 1996).

16

Rub in, "Thinking Sex," 21.

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Of course, the categories gay / lesbian and queer are not themselves homogeneous, ahistorical or essentialist. Perhaps at this point I should indicate why the term ' gay art' was used to incorporate both lesbian and queer art in this exhib ition, a by no means uncontro versial decision. GAY RIGHTS RITES RE- WRITES was directed at a double constituency, but priority was given in the choice of the term ' gay art ' to the general publ ic, those who might be submitting documents to the relevant parliamentary committee on the issue of gay rights in relation to the new constitution. 'Homosexual' was never considered, as too much associated with medical and legal discourses, and as indicating sexual practices rather than identity. 'Queer' is a problematical term for the general public in South Africa: for many 'straight ' people it remains a term of approbrium (whether seen as deserved or as undeserved . For many gays and lesbians it is a word (like 'dyke' and 'rnoffie ') that has been rehabilitated or proudly reappropriated; for others it remains an insult ; for relatively few it indicates a specific position in confrontational politics, which is how I have used it. It was not a politic term to use in relation to the general publi c at that specific moment of South African history, The argument for the omission of ' lesbian' on our posters is weaker and largely practical. Although it is true that many lesbians prefer to call themselves gay women, because of the stigma attached to the word ' lesbian' (it is still defamatory in South African law to describe someone as a lesbian I?), we were swayed by the unwieldiness of 'gay and lesbian' for the purposes of posters, handbill s etc. I think , in retrospect, that feminists and some lesbians were right to feel affronted . What can be said of the artists and their agenda has been said of militant emergent political minorities in general. Writing of such groups , Stuart Hall says: Typically, such groups do not seek to advance their cause via the traditional access to elite influence; they do not seek to enhance their position within the system of political bargaining. Instead they embrace militant, activist, "extremist" political tactics, and explicitly challen ge the system itself and its "rules of the game." Their techniques of protest and dissent contraven e the norms of political legitimacy which institutionalize political conflict. They take up deviant issues, adopt deviant life-styles and attitudes, impart aims and socially subversive values, in part as a way of dramatizing and symbolizing their alienation from the dominant orientation s of the hegemonic system. Far from seeking to win their way by traditional means of influence and negotiation, from

17 See Edwin Cameron, " Unapprehended felons," Desire, 90.

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the margins to the mainstream of power, they accent their disaffiliation from majority consensual values.P

Thi s statement not only sets out the programme and strategies of the queer; by implication it articulates the stand and techniques of the gay / lesbian, non-confrontational artist and lobb yist as well. Queers, then , celebrate liminality. They thrive on transgression, both sexual and aesthetic - which often implies a carni valesque element in the queer artist's work, or a strategic deployment of the politics of parody, as in "queer camp" or "dyke noir." Th e queer artist confronts oppositionally, and often affronts deliberately, celebrating difference in a deliberately provocative or offensive way. The queer may deny any need for liberation and may see a loss of liminality as impoverishing, just as forbidden fruits taste sweete r. He / she delights in his / her subversive subculture. The aristocratization of homo sexual identit y perceived by some critics in Europe from the end of the nineteenth century is still a part of queer life and leads to the perpetuation of identity politi cs and a minoritizing cast of mind which fears absorption or assimilation. Subculture is often presented as a form of resistance: 19 gay /lesbian and queer artists and theorists differ on whether the sub version should occur from within or by means of transgressive aesthetics from without. Many gay artists read subculture as necessarily subaltern. Dick Hebd ige argues that subcultures "take up the objec ts, spaces and signs avai lable to them within the larger system of culture in order to tum such objects and signs against the system." They are involved in what Umberto Eco calls "semiotic guerrilla warfare .Y'' Thi s, of course, provok es exactl y the kind of outburst produced in Bloemfontein, which gay artists often see as unnecessary and unfortunate. The vigour, carnivalesque wit and sheer Schadenfreude of the queer are therefore read as tactically inadvisable by apologists for gay / lesbian rights . The queer artist sees the gay / lesbian artist as inviting colonization and himself/ herself as resistin g it - thou gh our experience in Bloemfont ein may suggest that the queer, paradoxically, facilit ates colonizing aggression. What I have said about queer art may seem to suggest that it is socially irresponsible and lacking in seriousness. Works exhibited such as thos e by the Johannesburg artist Steven Cohen refute this. Pope Art (1995 , made in respon se to the papal visit 18 Stuart Hall, "Deviance, Politics and the Media," in Abclove, Barale & Halperin, ed. The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, 68--69. 19 See, for instance, Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Styl e (London & New York: Routledge, 1987). 20 Quoted in Hebdige, Subculture, 105.

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to South Africa), a large and colourful photographic screenprint on cloth, is a case in point (see Fig. 12). The work depicts and repeats, against the background ofthe new South African flag, the following motifs: the face of a crying infant; a headless man bowed down by a ball and chain in such a way that his bottom is invitingly presented; pelvic bones; a rose; a large and erect penis; condoms, some containing a glimpse of a section of the baby's face; a pope 's face in profile. The variety of juxtapositionings results in such things as the pope's nose being brought very close to the male buttocks and at other times to the rampant penis (see Fig. 13). A member of the press phoned me to complain about these "irreligious" images. He said - as did a number of people in Bloemfontein - that the work was obscene. Certainly the work was about the obscene. Cohen was attacking a number of obscenit ies, as he sees it. First, the obscene notion that one in every ten people is expected, in the name of religion and morality and by order of a purportedly loving Creator, to deny their sexual nature or be damned as sinners; secondly, the idea that, in an overcrowded world in which poverty is endemic, contraception is an evil - so that millions of babies are born to suffer; thirdly, that condoms are prohibited by the Catholic Church even in cases where a parent has AIDS , so that children are born with the disease, only to suffer and die. Cohen angrily and confrontat ionally pits his idea of the obscene against those of such people as the Bloemfontein censors. His is a profoundly humanitarian statement, while it is also frankly and wittily homoerotic . He desired to rub the nose of the pope, his co-religion ists, and others caught up in institutionalized homophobia and other forms of bigotry, literally and metaphorically, in these matters. Cohen 's symbolic violation of what, for some, guarantees social order is not anarchic, but utopian; it pits a notion of a new more inclusive order against a tyrannical pseudo-order which he reads as dystopian. The issue arises: what is the standing of the queer who displays his /her work within the institutionalized, politically suspect space of the Oliewenhuis ? Or who seeks to shock from within the relatively safe and tolerant space of the Gertrude Posel Gallery at the University of the Witwatersrand? Does his own logic or ethic not demand that he not neutralize his work, or not expose it to assimilation or colonization in this way? This raises the important matter of containment, a central issue in recent discussions of the transgressive and especially of the Bakhtinian camivalesque. The concept of the camivalesque had been extended, from its original application by Bakhtin to Rabelais, to what Simon Dentith describes as "Bakht in's attempt to mobilize, at the conceptual level only of course, the rumbustious popular life of the

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carnival against the official but murderous pieties of Church and State.,,21 The carnivalesque thus becomes not only an aesthetic that celebrates the body-based and grotesque and produces an art characterized by inversion, parody, vulgarity and a humour which may be described as fundamental, but is also seen as a potentially subversive force . Cohen 's Pope Art, a kind of fin-de-steele judgement scene combining the scatalogical with the eschatological, is of this kind . It is this apparently irreverent and subversive element that has been challenged. While Bakhtin sees the festive degradation and debasement of carnival "as a condition of popular renewal and regeneration.t'F many critics see licensed carnival as a strategy deployed by the authorities to regulate and defuse the transgressively 'low' or ' Other.' Joshua Deeter remarks that "high culture is allowed to perennially manufacture its own regimes of apparent subversion.t'P It can also make use of, or encourage, pract ices which, while seeming revolutionary, are useful to authority in either creating a safety-valve or, unwittingly, revealing the transgressive unacceptability of the practitioners as a subgroup, thus bolstering hegemonic consensus on that group. Dentith writes that "the side that made most efficient use of carnival festivity was the party of authority.'v" Jonathan Dollimore, in his rehearsal of various containment theories, shows that it is not only the effective containment of transgression but also its deployment which ensures that subversion and transgression are not merely defeated by law but "produced by law in a complex process of (re)legitimation - that is, the carnivalesque may be an effect of containment, essentially useful to authority, rather than a threat to it." The transgressively defiant is, in fact, dependent on that which is defied, or, as Dollimore puts it, "the transgression disobeys but authority relates the terms .,,25 He quotes Raymond Williams.i'' who writes that "It can be persuasively argued that all or nearly all initiatives and contributions, even when they take on manifestly alternative or oppositional forms, are in practice tied to the hegemonic - that the dominant culture, so to say, at once produces and limits its own forms of counter-culture."

2 1 Simon Dentith , Bakhtinian Thought : An Introductory Reader (London & New York : Routledge, 1995) : 71. 22

Dentith , Bakhtinian Thought , 68:

23

Quoted in Ferguson , "Exhibition Rhetorics ," 190, nl I.

24

Dentith, Bakhtinian Thought, 75.

Jonathan Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault (Oxford & New York : Clarendon, 1991) : 82. 25

26

Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (London: Oxford UP, 1977) .

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Accord ing to this view, the dominant culture of Bloemfontein, through its cultural custod ian, Dr Engelbrecht, and associated authorit y figures in church and state, allowed GA Y RIGHTS RI TES RE- WRITES to make a transgressive statement in the Oliewenhui s. This, with Engelbrecht's selective re-arrangement and the publi city afforded by press and pulpit, enabled him to show the ' low' in such a way that, while seeming to assault hegemonic values, they further entrenched and vindicated them, at least in the eyes of the like-minded. Dollimore argues that all containment theories recognize "that identity is an effect of the social domains which subversion and trans gression would contest.,m Such containment theories would suggest that the queer artist not only played right into the hands of authority in seeming to just ify and excuse homophobic indignation and control, but that the queer is an identity generated as the ' low' by the heteronormative as a logical and discursive necessit y for the ' high.' Simon Watney has said that "the modem gay identity was harrassed into existence in the first place";28 it might be suggested that this continues to be the case. The queer artist who feels he has been resistin g the pressures to conform either to hegemonic notion s of acceptable sexuality or to gay / lesbian desires to seek liberation in non-confrontational ways may be seen as deceived, his transgressive resistance "a ruse of the power which created it - a manufactured threat whose ' suppression ' is a strategy of control by the power which produced it.,,29 It is not necessary, however, to see stigmatized groups as entirely at the mercy of the social forces which seek to regulate them and to colonize their endeavours to define and liberate themselves. While acknowledging both the psychical internalization of power structures in the oppressed, and the flexible resilience of those power structures, Dollimore goes on to show that containment is "susceptible to subversion by the self-same challenge it has either incorporated, imagined or actually produ ced (via containment j.Y''' For this reason, "any particular episode of containment may be a stage in a larger process of change in which an apparent ' personal' failure becomes a stage in a longer term success." GA Y RI GHTS RITES RE-WRITES , then, as an exhibition, or the work of a specific artist contextuali zed within that exhibition (for

example, Steven Cohen 's Pope Art), may have succeeded , despite the attempts at containment, in introducing elements of "contradiction and dislocation in the mutually reactive process of transgression and its control":

28

Dollimore, Sexua l Dissidence, 82. Watney, Policing Desire, 3:

29

Dollimore, Sexual Dissidenc e, 84.

30

Dollimore, Sex ual Dissidence, 85.

27

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To recognize that meanings arc historically grounded and partly or largely (but never entirely) controlled by powerful interests is also, usually, to show them incapable of easy alterations . Even so, there is rarely a ruling bloc which controls meaning uncontested.,,31

Dollimore's theoretical stance here is supported by events in Bloemfontein. The ideological control of meaning attempted by Engelbrecht and his bloc was contested with some success, first from within, by those involved in the Oliewenhuis committee who supported the exhibition, then by those white Afrikaners who came to the exhibition and looked, listened, and made statements of support either in person or in the Visitors' Book. The latter included: "Hoekom al die bohaai?" ('Why all the fuss ?'); "Dominee, koop maar vir jou 'n kosmos! " ('Minister, buy yourself a painting of cosmos!' - cosmos is a South African wild flower favoured by sentimental painters); "Die bohaai het baie publisiteit verleen. Ek het Oliewenhuis nog nooit so

vol gesien nie" ('The fuss created much publicity. I have never seen the Oliewenhuis so ful1'); "Only offensive to completely insensitive viewers!!"; and, from visitors from the Netherlands, "Parels voor de zweinan" ('Pearls before swine') ; "If you don 't have an identity problem you should not reel threatened. Respect human rights and enjoy the cake"; "Die NG Kerk moet hul eerder by koeksusters bepaal!! Happy Baking! Dit is Stunning!" ('The Dutch Reformed Church should rather limit their attention to koeksusters!! '- a koeksuster is a traditional Afrikaans, syrupy, plaited form of confectionery) A small but extremely supportive group of students (drawn predominantly from the University of the Free State and Vista university) regularly attended the educational events generated around the exhibition. The gay / lesbian community init ially kept a very low profile but gradually, either encouraged by the artists who so openly examined, declared or celebrated their sexual orientation, or reacting against the attempts at containment and public condemnation, they appeared, and their comments in the Visitors ' Book modulated from cautious approval or identification (the signing together of two same-sex names) to overt statements of approval, grat itude and solidarity. One might have expected to hear closet doors banging shut all over the city (where there is a large gay /lesbian population), but the reverse was true . I have stressed that hostility and fascination in the Oliewenhuis were focused particularly on works by queer artists which might be said to have been especially useful in reinforcing the stereotype. This focus on the part of Engelbrecht, his supporters and the media was possibly an attempt to divert attention from the threat-

31

Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence, 86.

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ening aspects of the gay and lesbian artists' work. How, for instance, could a landscape by Aiden Walsh or a portrait by Hayden Proud or an abstract work by Clive van den Berg be threatening? The "Friends of the Oliewenhuis" had, prior to our opening, invited van den Berg to address them, before they knew that he was to exhibit works on GA Y RIGHTS RITES RE- WRITES. The Oliewenhuis owns one of his works which had been much admired before his personal erotic subject-choice was realized. It also owns a fine work by Marion Arnold, which I was able to persuade Hundt to allow me to incorporate in our exhibition, along with a new work by Arnold especially painted for GAY RIGHTS RITES RE-WRITES: this re-contextualizing of her earlier painting (colonizing it for our purposes, if you like) disconcerted those used to seeing it clothed in the sanctity of the permanent collection. The Oliewenhuis also owns works by participating artists Andrew Verster and Julia Teale. A number of people registered shock at the wolves that they had unwittingly, as it were, invited (in sheep's clothing) into the fold. More disconcerting to some than the strident and parodic transgressions of the queer was the thought that gay and lesbian artists might be undetectable, assimilable, apparently 'normal' - and that in some covert way they had been colonizing hegemonic 'high' spaces such as the Oliewenhuis. A potential threat of destabilization had gone unnoted! Recognizing the queer as ' homosexual' and as the ' Other' was easy: far more threatening was the lesbian / gay in invisible proximity. This was summed up in the phrase used by several shocked or nonplussed people - "I would never have known!" If the queers offended by flaunting their otherness, the gay and lesbian artists alarmed by their apparent lack of difference, their elimination of the binaries us /them, inside / out, straight! gay. The so-called "savage" colonial subject was viewed , in colonial times, as alarmingly (yet reassuringly, because obviously) alien - clearly the uncivilized 'Other ' in the eyes of racist colonizers. The assimilated , aculturalized, missioneducated, ' infiltrating ' native may have seemed much more alarmingly subversive to an apartheid mentality. Put another way, a battering-ram is easily recognizable as dangerous; a Trojan horse is towed unrecognized within the very walls of the beleaguered city. Dr Engelbrecht may have done us a favour in cordoning off works deemed to be offensive. In so doing he created, and highlighted, a more insidiously unsettling exh ibition of lesbian / gay life. Hitherto I have focused on two forms of colonization in relation to GAY RIGHTS RITES RE- WRITES - first, the colonizing interventions of patriarchal and hetero-

normative figures and forces in Bloemfontein, and secondly, possible feelings of being colonized, or of needing to resist colonization on the part of both queer and

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lesbian / gay exhibitors by other artists' identity politics. A third relevant form of possible colonization may be endemic to the activity of curating itself. It is easy enough to perceive what happened in Bloemfontein and the way in which our strategic presentation of positive self-images was partly appropriated to contain or stigmatize . However, it seems to me that curating itself is fraught with dangers and is open to accusations of colonizing activity and attitudes. The queer critic, for instance, might feel that we presented a contested encoding of gay subjectivity as definitive. Museums have traditionally been regarded as spaces of authority, and the exhibition's context would seem to underwrite our taxonomic, political, aesthetic and pedagogic agendas. A curator feels the need for some over-all vision or design, and for interpretation, explication and exegesis of the cultural products to be displayed. This may be especially the case in an overtly polemical and occasional exhibition such as GAY RIGHTS RITES RE-WRITES which was also something of an apologia pro vita sua. At the same time, she /he experiences an uneasy fear of wrongly appropriating or misappropriating, and of gathering together diverse artefacts in arbitrary systems of value and meaning. We may have desired to create an authentic expression of identity, yet we knew this could not be natural or innocent. An exhibition is formed by a constellation of forces comprising, for instance, curatorial agendas and biases; discourse(s) - including the accessing materials, notes, lectures, walkabouts; the museum itself - its spaces, policies, atmosphere, history, constituencies; the directors, policy-makers, staff, sponsors and funders, and their power struggles and ideological commitments; outside pressures and interventions, including the media, critics, censors and state or civic interference; our own internalized, or at least partially unquestioned, notions of such categories as ' fine art' and ' museum standards .' Curators often seek to intellectualize, or to justify selection, order, classification, display, juxtapositioning and interpretation; indeed, they are required to do so when producing such things as catalogues. The coherent 'order' or pseudo-order of the exhibition (which creates a - spurious - sense of aesthetic and formal inevitability) is in fact a temporary and contingent business: it frequently overrides the specific, individual histories of the artefacts' production, appropriation, acquisition etc. It involves the imposition of identity, value and meaning by contextualizing, aestheticizing and use of interpretative 'aids.' Curators may make meaning Gust as Dr Engelbrecht did) - the product of fiction and faction naturalized and masquerading as objective fact - rather than disclosing it. Perhaps viewers are more vigilant towards the curatorial designs upon them at an overtly political exhibition. I am

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conscious that, in the case of GAY RIGHTS RITES RE-WRITES, within the overall desire to reach the heteronormative, homophobic or merely indifferent ' straight ' viewer, there were other (gay / lesbian) politics being practised. Culture is appropriated by both 'insiders' and 'outsiders' (these are, of course, relative terms). Is a lesbian / gay art exhibition the artful colonization by 'outsiders' of an 'insider' space ? Does the 'outsider' become assimilated or neutralized by hegemonic appropriation once she / he enters a space associated with dominant culture? Is the gay / lesbian or queer curator who sites an exhibition in a mainstream institution compromised (even if she does not have the counter-discursive strategies of an Engelbrecht with which to contend)? Is that curator party to the colonizing of the artists' statements? Baudrillard declares that it can be taken as axiomatic that "all categories of meaningful objects function within a ramified system of symbols and values. " Does this appropriate the 'outside' to the ' inside' (or are these, as Diane Fuss

suggests.V binaries in need of deconstruction? - a thought doubtless terrifying to the likes of Dr Engelbrecht)? Does it permit possible reappropriation? What is required is a new level of curatorial self-consciousness and , perhaps, curatorial humility. Ferguson has argued that "it is possible to appraise the position of that inst itutional utterance within ideolog ical frameworks and dominant organizations of meanings in the larger social frame.,,33 The postcolonial curator, working within a framework of cultural studies, needs to be aware of the complex dynamics and discursive relationships operating and that he / she does not stand outside these. If "Exhibitions are the material speech of what is essentially a political institution" and "socially authorized voices,"34 curators must be aware ofthis fact and alert to its consequences. We should also be aware that our own input, even when it challenges the centre and speaks for the liminal , will be political, and that an exhibition's utterance can so easily become, however unintentionally, a betrayal. Cultural imperialism functions not only at the centre but on the margins . As Mieke Sal puts it, "an indispensable consequence of the confining nature of discourse is the need for se1fcritical analysis."35 The curators' salutary caution, if not disillusionment, stems not only from the realization that the museum or gallery is not "an ideal, semi-autonomous place where art merely apes the rituals of contemplative relig ion with its misDiane Fuss, ed. inside/out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories (London: Routledge, 1991) . Ferguson, "Exhibition Rhetorics," 184. 34 Ferguson, "Exhibition Rhetorics," 182. 35 Mieke Bal, "The Discourse of the Museum," in Thinking about Exhibitions, ed. Recsa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson & Sandy Nairne (London & NewYork: Routledge, 1996): 214. 32 33

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placed social authority'S" - the view challenged here is expressed in Dr Engelbrecht 's notion that a museum by definition is a place for "discovery" ( 'ontdekking ') and also of "pensive thought"; "a place where rest and calm can be found" (" 'n plek waar rustigheid en kalmte gevind kan word')3? - but also from the realization of their own creation by, and participation in, problematical discursive practices. Artist ic inclusions and exclusions are often ideologically determined. In an exhibition aimed at consciousness-raising and the pricking of conscience there can be no pretence of objectivity: but claims to objectivity in any exhibition must be dubious. Exhibitions, whether temporary or permanent, are "systems of representation which formulate and uphold identities (artistic, national, subcultural, 'international,' gender - or race-specific, avant-garde, regional, etc).,,38 Whether or not they become complicated by the centre fighting back at the margin, as in our case, they are battlegrounds of representation, identity and dogmatics involving social relat ions and power politics. They are pedagogically directional. While the concept of the curator from outs ide the institution as a 'cultural guerrilla' valorizes and glamorizes, it must be remembered that the curator can easily adopt an attitude both imperialistic and imperious. Ferguson reminds us that "curatorial imperatives within museums [...] are often linked inextricably to market-driven forces, the social pressures of a small body of vested-interest gatekeepers, disciplinary diversions and institutional stereotypes of public roles .,,39 This was the case at the Oliewenhuis - but the rivalry between factions that might be said to have developed there was possible because we, too, were "a small body of vested-interest" polemicists with our own commitment to stating a case. The challenge to Dr Engelbrecht and his board was that they failed to see the creative possibilities of our coming together and thus failed to respond in a way appropriate to a more democratic South Africa. Ferguson writes : "if other authentic classes, races and formerly marginalized voices are committedly introduced, the exh ibition form may produce unexpected flourishes , new subgenres, new sites of speech .T'" This challenge, this possibility of expanding "the play of exhibitions" and "of serious achievement.?'" was never entertained by the authorities in Bloem-

36

Ferguson, " Exhibition Rhetorics," 187.

37

39

C.M. Engelbrecht, " Paradokse van die Museumwese," Culna 52 (September 1997). Ferguson, "Exhibition Rhetoric s," 179. Ferguson, " Exhibition Rhetorics," 181.

40

Ferguson, "Exhibition Rhetorics," 185.

41

Ferguson, "Exhibition Rhetorics ," 185.

38

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fontein - yet I believe that GAY RIGHTS RITES RE-WRITES might be said to have achieved something of this sort despite (and paradoxically because ot) them. South Africa is the only nation in the world to mention sexual orientation specifically in its Constitution. The gay and lesbian community has been formally acknowledged as part of the so-called "Rainbow Nation." The new South Africa is committed not only to equality for all, but to celebration of diversity. Affirmation of diversity and respect for difference takes us to the concept of a multiculturalism which can accommodate gay / lesbian / queer culture. Some would see this as patronizing or colonizing in its application to such activities as art exhibitions, even as leading to falsification . Others would argue that the system allows all kinds of groups to use art and art theatres for their own ends, for example, postcolonized people. A gallery may be the site of the presentation of art as a tranformational forum, or index of change, as well as the setting for a rearguard action / reaction like Dr Engelbrecht 's. However, that which is exhibited can become that which is exploited, its difference read as lack, or exoticized and perceived as a positive but distorted 'Otherness.' A museum or gallery may distort by offering an image of group identity as static or frozen, thus ignoring the constant redefinition of identity in which groups, cultures and subcultures are engaged . My epigraph from Karl Marx states "They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented": I appropriate this to suggest not political representation but the concrete forms of self-presentation and the reinvention of self through cultural products such as artworks and exhibitions and the subversive mispresentations which might be the product of attempts to contain or colon ize these. Dr Engelbrecht's and his supporters ' high-handed colonizing activity sought to deprive the 'Other' of the right to present, represent or reinvent. In a far subtler way, curatorial endeavours may engage in similar dynamics. Curatorial awareness and sensitivity to these problems should help avoid, as much as possible, paternalism, colonizing reinterpretation or 'misrepresentation.' Dr Engelbrecht and his supporters who succeeded in having the exhibition moved from the main area downstairs may feel that they had the 'last word.' But successful exhibitions are not about the last word, or about closure . They open debate and initiate research (as ours has done, both here and abroad); they are part of ongoing argument and self-definition, praxis not stasis, disclosure not closure. They give momentum to "something ever more about to be" - in this case not only an aesthetic or cultural event and a historic moment, but the evolution of gay and lesbian communities in South Africa and the evolving nature and dynamics of post-apartheid South Africa.

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WORKS CITED Abelove, Henry, Michele Barale & David Halperin, ed. The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (New York & London: Routledge, 1993). Bal, Micke. "The Discourse of the Museum," in Greenberg, Ferguson & Nairne, Thinking about

Exhibitions, 201-18. Dentith, Simon. Bakhtinian Thought: An Introductory Reader (London & New York: Routledge, 1995) . Dollimore, Jonathan, Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault (Oxford & New York: Clarendon, 1991). Dunton, Chris, & Mai Palmbergi. Human Rights and Homosexuality in Southern Africa (Current African Issues; Uppsala: Nordi ska Africainstituet, 1996). Engelbrecht, C.M. "Paradokse van die Museumwese," Culna 52 (September 1997). Ferguson, Bruce W. "Exhibition Rhetorics: Material Speech and Utter Sense ," in Greenberg, Ferguson & Nairne, Thinking about Exhibitions, 175-90 . Fuss , Diane , ed. inside / out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories (London: Routledge, 1991). Gev isser, Mark . " A Different Fight for Freedom: A History of South African Lesbian and Gay Organization - The 1950s to the 1990s" (1994) , in Gevisser & Cameron, cd . Defiant Desire, 14--86.

- -, & Edwin Cameron, ed. Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa (Johannesburg : Ravan , 1994). Greenberg, Reesa, Bruce W. Ferguson & Sandy Na irne, ed. Thinking about Exhibitions (London & New York: Routledge, 1996). Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning ofStyle (London & New York: Routledge, 1987) . Rubin , Gayle S. "Thinking Sex : Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politic s of Sexuality," in Abelove, Barale & Halper, ed. The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, 3-44. Stallybrass, Peter, & Allon White . The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (London: Methuen, 1986). Watney, Simon. Policing Desire: Pornography, Aids and the Media (London: Cassell , 1989).

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12: Steven Cohen, Pope Art (handpaintcd photographic silkscreen on

canvas , 1995)

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F I GU RE

13: Steven Cohen, Pope Art (detail)

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14: Gordon Froud, A False-Bottomed Suitcase for Robert Mugabe (mixed-

media assemblage, 1995)

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F I G U RE

15: Marion Arnold , Right of Way (oil on canvas , 1995)

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Notes on Contributors

Joan Bellis is a lecturer in the Department of English at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she has taught since 1977. Her research areas include Romanticism, the gothic novel, the Victorians, modernism, feminism and queer studies. She curated the first South African national gay and lesbian art exhibition, GAY RIGH TS RITES R EWRITES, which was shown in Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Johannesburg in 1995-96.

Elias Bongmba, who has a doctorate in the philosophy of religion, teaches African and African diaspora religions at Rice University in Houston, Texas. His research interests include religion and literature, ethics and popular culture. His book on ethics, African

Witchcrafl and Otherness: A Philosophical and Theological Critique of Intersubjective Relations, will be published by SUNY Press.

Marijke Du Toit, who teaches modem South African history at the University of Natal, Durban, completed her doctorate in history at the University of Cape Town in 1996. Her research was on women and philanthropy in the formative years of early Afrikaner nationalist politics . She has also written on the politics of language and translation in South African oral historiography, and is currently researching the visual construction of 'white-

ness' in early twentieth-century South Africa.

Elizabeth Elbourne is an assistant professor in the Department of History at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where she teaches South African and British history. Her current research focuses on women and colonialism , and on aboriginal peoples in the British white-settler empire between the 1780s and the 1830s, with particular attention to networks centred on London . Her book Religion and Empire: The Khoikhoi, the London

Missionary Society and the Contest for Christianity in Britain and the Eastern Cape, 1779 to 1853 is forthcom ing from McGill-Queen's University Press.

Patricia Hayes joined the History Department at the University of the Western Cape in 1995. She previously taught African history at Bucknell University, Pennsylvania, and was a Research Fellow at Cambridge University, where she also completed her doctorate

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on Namibian history. She has co-edited two books on the history of South African colonialism in Namibia . Her country of origin is Zimbabwe.

Johan Jacobs is Professor of English and Head of Graduate Studies in the Faculty of Human Sciences at the University of Natal, Durban. He has published widely on South African autobiography, prison writing and fiction, and on postcolonial writing. He is an editor of Current Writing: Textand Reception in Southern Africa. He is currently co-editing a collection of critical essay on the poetry, prose and paintings of Breyten Breytenbach, and completing a book on the South African novel during the late 1980s and 1990s.

Amy Kaler is an assistant professor of sociology at the University ofAlberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She received her doctorate in sociology and feminist studies from the University of Minnesota in 1998. She does research on gender, reproduction and social change from a culturalist perspective, concentrating on the diffusion of hormonal contraception and other changes in reproductive practice in Southern Africa, particularly Zimbabwe and Malawi. She has published in the Journal of Southern African Studies, Social

Science and Medicine, Social Science History and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Her book Running After Pills: Politics, Gender and Contraception in Colonial Zimbabwe is forthcoming from Heinemann.

Desiree Lewis teaches English Studies at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg. She has published in the fields of Southern African writing, popular culture and feminist theory. Her doctorate on Bessie Head from the University of Cape Town explores the range of literary and philosophical currents in this writers' oeuvre and considers creative practices that defy earlier ideas about political engagement in South African culture. Consequently, her doctorate forms part of Lewis's broad research interests in marginal, ambiguous or compound cultural practices.

Kirsten Mackenzie wrote her doctorate on middle-class identity in Cape Town. She has spent the last two years in Brisbane on a research fellowship.

Shula Marks was former Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London, and is now Professor of Southern African history at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London . Her current interests are in the history of nationalism, medicine and gender in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century South Africa. Her books include the well-known "Not Either an Experimental Doll": the Separate Worlds of Three South

African Women (University of Natal Press, 1987) and her most recent Divided Sisterhood: Race, Class and Gender in the South African Nursing Profession (University of Witwatersrand Press 1994). She is currently working on a set of essays on the social history of

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medicine in South Afric a, entitled Mothers, Miners and Maniacs, from which the essay in this collection is drawn .

Meredith McKittrick is an assistant professor in the Department of History and School of Foreign Service at Georgetown Univer sity, USA . She has recentl y completed a book manuscript on generation and christian ization in northern Namibia, and is beginning a project on the history of water in northern Namibia and southern Angol a.

Gary Minkley is Associate Professor of History at the University of the Western Cape . He has written on the history of space and the city in South Africa, particularly on East London in the Eastern Cape Province . He is currently working on a manuscript entitled " Border Dialogue s: Space and the Politics of Identity in East London ." He has also published widely in the field of public history, and a join manuscript with Ciraj Rassool and Leslie Witz on Public Pasts in South Africa is in preparation.

Ciraj Rassool is a senior lecturer in History, and Museum and Heritage Studies at the University of the Western Cape. He has written widely on South Afric an public history, visual history and resistance historiography. His co-authored book Skeletons in the Cupboard: South African Museums and the Trade in Human Remains 1907-1917 was pub lished in 2000. He is a trustee of the District Six Museum in Cape Town, and a councillor of the South African Herita ge Resources Agency.

Fanuel Kauna Shingenge is from Ongandjera, Namibia, and has worked as a research assistant for Meredith McKittrick for seven years. In 1998, he received his BA from Central State University in the USA . He writes poetry and plans to return to university soon for postgraduate study. Currently he is workin g in Windhoek.

Ann Laura Stoler is Professor of Anthropology, History and Women 's Studie s at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and has served there as Director of the Docto ral Program in Anthropology and History. In over twenty-eight years of ethnographic and archival research , she has worked on questions related to gender, race, politic al economy and the politics of knowledge in colonial and contemporary Indonesia, colonial Vietnam , and in the Netherlands and Franc e. She serves on the editorial board s of Comparative Studies in

Society and History, The Journal of the History of Sexuality, Historical Sociology, and Critical Anthropology. Her recent books include Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault 's History ofSexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Duke University Press, 1995) and Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (University of California Press, 1997, co-ed ited with Frederick Cooper).

Wendy Woodward is Associate Professor of English at the University of the Western Cape , where she teaches South African literary texts and creative writing; she has recentl y

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served as Director of the Women's and Gender Studies Programme. She has published articles on the racializing and sexualizing of white and Khoisan identities in the early nineteenth century in the Eastern Cape, on South African writing, and on the teaching of expository writing to first-year students.

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