Inventing Shaka: Using History in the Construction of Zulu Nationalism 9781685853853

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INVENTING SHAKA

INVENTING

SHAKA Using History in the Construction of Zulu Nationalism

Daphna Golan

L~E RIENNER PUBLISHERS BOULDER LONDON

Some parts of this book were originally printed as parts of “The Life Story of Shaka,” “Gender Tensions in the Zulu State,” and “Inkatha and Its Use of the Zulu Past,” in History in Africa, 1990 and 1991 (Atlanta: Emory University), and are reprinted here with permission. Paperback edition published in the United States of America in 2003 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. Gray's Inn House, 127 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1 5DB First hardcover edition published in 1994 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. © 1994 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved ISBN 978-1-58826-277-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments

vii ix

Introduction

1 11 35

1 Inkatha and the Reconstruction of Zulu Nationalism 2 The Colonization of the Zulu Past

3 In Search of Roots and Pride: The Zulu Past and the

Conclusion

67 85 117 137

Bibliography Index About the Book and Author

149 163 171

Leadership of the Christian African Community

4 Shaka's Image: Four Views 5 The Life Story of King Shaka in the Oral Tradition

v

ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS Bantustans of South Africa, 1980s Natal and Zululand, 1900s

3 41

PHOTOGRAPHS Inkatha People Carrying "Customary Weapons" Chief Gatsha Buthelezi Chaka's Grave

16 22 121

PLATES "Chaka, King of the Zoolus," Sketch, J. Saunders King

vii

37

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

When I was a child, my father used to point out to me the ways in which the Israeli government managed to erase from all school textbooks any reference to the contributions of its opponents, especially those of his friends of the Stern Gang (LEHI), to the struggle for Israeli independence. When my father died, I was old enough to disagree with him on virtually everything political but still too young to explain my views. However, I owe him the understanding that things may have happened differently from the way they are written as "history." This book is therefore dedicated to the memory of Meir Golan. I owe more thanks than I can give to Shula Marks, whose help and support for the last ten years have not only given me any understanding I have of Zulu history but have also opened my eyes to a better understanding of the historian's role in society. Shula has devoted enormous energies to my research and has always been generous in giving her time, understanding, and sympathy. Without her extremely detailed and thoughtful comments and her moral support, this work would not have been completed. I am grateful to many South Africans for their help and hospitality and for sending material to keep me informed: especially Trevor and June Cope, Gerald Mare, Eirena van der Spuy, Janis Grobbelaar, and Carolyn Hamilton. Very special thanks to Howard Varney of the Legal Resource Center, who patiently answered my questions about current events in Natal and generously fulfilled my chutzpadik requests for photos and details of the "cultural weapons" trials. I also thank Gugu Shozi for guiding me through the many difficulties of South Africa and for providing valuable translations from the Zulu. The late M. B. Yengwa was most helpful both as a translator from the Zulu and as an invaluable source of information. Many people read chapters of the book and made valuable comments. I am especially grateful to Naomi Chazan, Stanley Cohen, Steven Kaplan, Nehemia Levtzion, and Eyal Ben-Ari of The Hebrew University as well as to Achille Mbembe and Pearl Alice Marsh. Norma Schneider asked difficult and important questions and provided expert editing. Ayala Singer made sure that I included all of the appropriate bibliographical notes. My research was funded in part by The Harry S Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace of The Hebrew University, Jerusalem. ix

X

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Finally, I owe many thanks to my husband, Amotz Agnon, and to our children, Gali and Uri, who have suffered for years from the double burden of my being away for my political activities or busy with my academic research. They are mentioned at the end of this section because that is the convention, but they have supported me the whole time and have always been encouraging and helpful. -D.G.

INVENTING SHAKA

INTRODUCTION

ETHNICITY AND THE INVENTION OF TRADITION

This work is about "invented traditions"-traditions invented by colonial administrators, anthropologists, filmmakers, and bards, and those more recently invented by the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in order to help it become an important political player in the "new South Africa." It is about the relationship between "invented traditions" and "imagined communities"l-why people invent the past the way they do and the effects of the past that they invent on their present and future. In today's South Africa, the way that the construction of the past relates to ethnicity and national identity is of critical importance to the country's future. South African historians have been debating whether the nineteenth century Zulu wars, known as the mfecane, actually took place. Julian Cobbing developed a fascinating "alibi" thesis, according to which missionaries and traders who came to Natal and Zululand in the early nineteenth century invented the mfecane myth in order to hide the extensive slave trade in which they were engaging. These missionaries and traders claimed that depopulation of the area was due to the mfecane and thus, whites came to settle in an empty land. This myth was later expanded by the apartheid regime to explain the natural "pluralism" of African societies and how they "self-sequestered themselves into proto-Bantustans in the time of Shaka."2 A panel of the Voortrekkers Monument in Pretoria that showed a Zulu warrior about to smash the head of a Voortrekker' s baby against a wagon wheel was replaced with a milder version of the 1838 struggle between the Zulu and the Afrikaners.3 In this case, only one of the many images incorporated in this shrine, which pays homage to the first Afrikaner settlers and the heroic suffering of their wives and children on the way to conquer the promised land, has been changed. In the near future, however, we will no doubt witness the renaming of streets, buildings, and airports as well as the creation of new history textbooks. Every colony that has gained independence has undergone such a process, and similar changes are still taking place around the world.

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As ar.. Israeli who grew up with the unchallenged hegemonic historiography of "a country without people for a people without a state," the process of challenging prevailing myths about the South African past fascinates me.4 Historians of South Africa have long advanced the myth that the land was empty when the first whites arrived. Even though archaeologists showed years ago that Africans had inhabited the area for centuries before the whites came, South African diplomats, historians, and teachers have continued to emphasize the Afrikaners' rights as firstcomers. Now that apartheid is over and South Africa has changed its political regime to one in which the black majority rules, efforts to "correct" apartheid historiography and initiate new national holidays, symbols, and figures will increase. The struggle to define the "real" past is not just a conflict between the official version of the apartheid regime and the version of its long-time opponents: There are many complex processes involved in the construction of the past, and many interests and ideologies, as well as many truths. The shape that this process takes will have an enormous effect on the shape of the country's future. One element of the struggle, the debate over the Zulu past and the image of King Shaka, who ruled the Zulu empire in the early nineteenth century, is very much alive in South Africa. Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, prime minister of K waZulu (one of the ten impoverished and fragmented "selfgoverning" Bantustans created by the apartheid regime), is known for his long public speeches about the ways in which Zulu history has been distorted. The annual memorials to King Shaka, held near his tomb, are also intended to "correct white bias." The South African Supreme Court is asked to rule on the identification of traditional Zulu weapons, and dozens of (mostly white) academics organize conferences to determine what ethnicity is and when Zuluness was invented. Understanding this battle over symbols, representations of the past, and the reconstruction of Zulu history in today's South Africa is central to an understanding of the bloody wars between the supporters of Inkatha and those of the African National Congress (ANC), between landlords and their tenants, and among people who have very little and are fighting over minimal basic resources. The construction and reconstruction of Zulu history and of the image of King Shaka are part of a larger intellectual enterprise: the invention of "ethnicity." Indeed, South Africa has a particularly long history of colonization of the African past. Natal is one of the prime examples of how "traditionalism" was utilized to divide and conquer. As early as the 1840s, Theophilus Shepstone, Natal's secretary for native affairs, advocated the establishment of a system of "customary law" for Africans.5 Under this system, "tribal" units were retained, and chiefs were expected to maintain law and order among their peoples. When trustworthy hereditary chiefs could not be found, commoners were appointed to their offices. In this way,

INTRODUCTION

Official map, Republic of South Africa

3

4

INVENTING SHAKA

Natal could be governed at minimal expense and the tribal distinctions used to divide and conquer the African peoples.6 Between 1846 and 1864, some 2.25 million acres, about one-sixth of Natal's land, were set aside for purely African occupation. Every effort was made to group Africans together on these reserve lands under the rule of their recognized chiefs, where they were governed according to customary law.7 The establishment of these reserves was intended to restrict the "natives" to certain areas, "keeping them, if possible, a little way removed from the contaminating influence of the chief town and the port."8 White administrators and missionaries involved themselves in Zulu culture, religion, and history. They spoke the Zulu language, collected oral traditions, and claimed to "know the natives" and their history.9 This "traditionalism" proved an efficient way to manipulate established African systems. It checked the developmental momentum of African society, displaced its legal system from its social context, and distorted its history. The apartheid regime developed such traditionalist and divide-and-conquer policies into an encompassing theory. The system of apartheid, or separate development, promoted the idea that black South Africans were divided into ten ethnic groups (later called nations), each with its own distinct language, culture, history, and Bantustan, or homeland. This idea was meant to legitimize laws excluding blacks from political participation in "white South Africa" and to explain the exclusion of blacks from some 87 percent of South Africa's land. Officials of the apartheid regime installed "authentic ethnic leaders," paid them salaries, and helped to develop rural governments in the ten homelands. The best known of these leaders is Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, the head of Inkatha, who presents himself as Shaka's heir. Buthelezi has become a master of the manipulation of ethnic symbols. On appropriate occasions-and more and more frequently-he exchanges his Western suit for traditional garb, and his hats are becoming more and more "authentic." It is not surprising, then, that the term ethnicity has had a bad connotation in South African historiography for black South Africans. The definition of ethnicity was not debated, and it was studied only in the context of its use or manipulation by the apartheid or colonial regime. The idea was that in the "new South Africa"-one with a democratic black regime-ethnicity would not be important. Yet, although the dream of a majority rule has come true, ethnic violence has not stopped. Since President F. W. de Klerk's historic speech and the release from prison of ANC leader Nelson Mandela in early 1990, thousands have been killed in South Africa. There are different explanations for these killings: Some talk of "black on black violence"- a term usually used by whites in a kind of racist anthropology designed to conjure up fearsome myths of black savagery. (Of course, we know of no white on white violence.) Others speak of tribal or ethnic war"Zulus killing Xhosa and vice versa"-and explain the tribal violence in

INTRODUCTION

5

terms of the "historical struggle" between the two tribes, or "because Inkatha is an ethnic organization which mobilizes people on tribal lines," or, in the Inkatha version, because the ANC is dominated by communist Xhosas who have no respect for Zulu tribal tradition. Still others explain the scenes of war they see on television as a struggle "over the distribution of the marginal resources left over for blacks after the collapse of the apartheid state control."lO At first, the debate about whether the nineteenth-century Zulu wars really did take place may seem like a self-indulgent intellectual exercise. Yet the subsequent questions raised by the same historians who put the original question are crucial ones. For they relate to what nationalism and ethnicity are, and how the past has been constructed-questions that are essential in the South Africa of the 1990s.

WHYSHAKA?

Shaka ruled the Zulu kingdom from 1816 to 1828, the period of its greatest imperial expansion. By the time the Zulu empire was conquered by the British in 1879, then divided into thirteen chiefdoms and destroyed in civil wars, it was one of the most powerful empires in Africa. Shaka's birth and childhood are subject to various accounts and interpretations, but historians agree that he was born under circumstances that were unusual in his society and that he did not have a normal childhood. He is well remembered as a ruler not only by the Zulu but among their neighbors, of whom some fled the wars of conquest, some fought and were defeated, and some submitted without fighting. Shaka is also known as an innovator in the fields of arms and military techniques. He was killed in 1828 by a group of people close to him, including his brother Dingane, who succeeded him as the ruler of the Zulu kingdom. Shaka is the subject of a major strand of literature written on the Zulu and has become an important symbol both inside and outside South Africa. Today his image stands at the center of the debate about the past and the future of South Africa, as evidenced by the Inkatha party's use of the annual memorial ceremonies near his tomb for its important political gatherings. For many white South Africans, Shaka symbolizes tyranny and the "rule of fear" that is depicted as the traditional African order (as we will see in Chapter 2). For many blacks, he represents African power before colonialism and the belief in the capability of blacks to lead themselves; they see him as one of the first black nationalists to envision a united South Africa. As such, Shaka symbolizes not only power but unity. He is depicted as a genius who was also a man of the people who struggled for the good of his nation. Like most nineteenth-century white writers, the Inkatha party

6

INVENTING SHAKA

emphasizes Shaka's image as a military figure, stressing his expertise in the use of force and his love of war. Shaka became a symbol not only for South Africans, but also for Africans throughout the continent and for African Americans as well. For example, Leopold Sedar Senghor adapted Shaka as a symbol for the Negritude movement, depicting him as a martyred black Christ.11 Throughout French-speaking Africa, Shaka is viewed as a romantic figure, a symbol of the will of a united Africa to free itself from the cultural and economic dominance of Europe. Whether Shaka's image in the future will continue to be one of a precursor of black nationalism, independence, and unity depends on conflicting views about ethnicity, nationalism, and black consciousness and how such views will come together in the new South Africa. My choice of Shaka as an example of how history is constructed courts the danger of isolating the Zulu king from the work in which he appears and participating in the dominant and problematic historiography of "great men." This tendency to see Zulu history as the story of great men can be seen throughout South African historiography. Until the 1960s, the Zulu kingdom was depicted in historical works as a homogeneous unit in which the rulers determined what happened and in which the rulers' deeds, especially in warfare, were the main focus of interest. Thus, for example, the permission to settle in certain areas granted by Shaka to Lieutenant Farewell, a former British naval officer and trader, was later a cause for much debate, for what the Europeans viewed as land granted them by the sovereign was viewed by the Zulu as permission to occupy lands that were only symbolically the "property" of the king. This example of the misunderstanding of the nature of the king's sovereignty, and therefore of the permanence of his permission to occupy certain lands, suggests that there were other more general misconceptions that characterized European understanding of and writing on Zulu history. The depiction of Shaka as a great man whose personal biography was connected to the processes of state formation in the area was not only a colonial misunderstanding but was also perpetuated by the Zulu royal family because this depiction strengthened the image of the Zulu kingdom as a centralized entity by ignoring the internal splits among different ethnic groups and the struggles between local chiefs and the royal house. Moreover, by preserving only the political history of kings and their wars, historians omitted social and economic history and the history of the "common man" and-even more so-woman. Today these omissions serve the interests of the Zulu Inkatha movement in its attempt to present the Zulu as a homogeneous, united people that stands solidly behind the movement, and Inkatha leader Chief Buthelezi has been especially critical of revisionist historians who present the complexities of South African society in the

INTRODUCTION

7

nineteenth century. For, like colonial writers, Inkatha describes the history (and especially the destruction) of the Zulu kingdom as unrelated to such major nineteenth-century transformations as mineral discoveries, industrial capitalism, and urbanization. The political discourse formulated by Chief Buthelezi and by his opponents makes it clear that inquiry into the past is by no means the obsession of intellectuals alone; it is also crucial for the key political actors in the drama of South Africa today.

THE CONSTRUCTION OF ZULU NATIONALISM AND THE INVENTION OF THE PAST

In dealing with Inkatha-the Zulu National Cultural Liberation Movement, now called the Inkatha Freedom Party-and its manipulation of the Zulu past, I focus on how the IFP' s presentation of King Shaka serves the highly controversial movement. Special attention is devoted in Chapter 1 to Inkatha history textbooks, which have been used in all KwaZulu schools since 1979. I compare these texts, written by a special Inkatha committee, with those used in white Natalian schools. I shall also discuss a 1991 trial in which the South African Supreme Court ruled that President de Klerk initiated an illegal amendment to the law when he decreed that the Zulu be allowed to carry traditional "cultural" weapons. Relying on an affidavit from an anthropologist, the judge ruled that the carrying of such weapons is a recently invented tradition and not part of Zulu heritage. However, as I will show in the following chapters, Inkatha did not invent Zulu nationalism, and the party has used images and concepts of the past that predate its formation. Although Inkatha has mastered the manipulation of the Zulu past, Zulu history was also used by colonialists, missionaries, the leaders of the African petty bourgeoisie, the Zulu royal family, and individual novelists and filmmakers to serve their own ends. They all had their own reasons to "invent" the history of the Zulu kingdom as that of a united, powerful, and homogeneous empire. We should understand Inkatha' s use of history not as a unique phenomenon but rather as an extension, perhaps an exaggeration, of a process in which blacks and whites, Zulu and non-Zulu took part. In Chapter 2, I will look at the construction of colonial notions of Zulu history and the way that history was manipulated by white travelers, missionaries, and colonial administrators. The function of the author in colonialist texts was tied to the legal and institutional system that determined, circumscribed, and articulated the realm of discourse.t2 Thus, while these historical texts were seemingly written out of an interest in the history of the colonized country and peoples, their real function was to justify colonial occupation and exploitation. Some did so by demonstrating that the

8

INVENTING SHAKA

"ingrained barbarism" of the natives demanded an indefinite European presence to civilize them (and in the process to continue to enjoy the fruits of native labor as well as a position of moral superiority).l3 Other texts stressed the natives' need for a system of rule as strong and repressive as their "traditional" one. The South African colonial situation gave rise to a uniquely repressive racial system with which no other compares, but it did share some characteristics with other "colonial situations": It rigorously systemized and codified the inequality, oppression, and deprivation of the subjugated people. The persistence of the colonial system has had a major effect on the way the past is reconstructed by different groups in South Africa: Europeans, Zulu traditionalists, and the Christian African urban intelligentsia. The historical writings of the Zulu Christian community, that is, the petty bourgeois between the 1920s and the 1940s, are analyzed in Chapter 3. During this period the African Christians developed new connections with traditional Zulu leaders for three reasons. First, they needed the traditional leaders because a 1920 law stated that land could only be purchased on a communal basis. Second, the educated African community was influenced by a new spirit of pan-Africanism and the search for roots, which meant looking back to its Zulu past. And third, the segregation plan introduced in 1926 by Hertzog, which was the legal and ideological base for policies of "separate development," put paid to the African educated community's long-held liberal belief that its members would eventually be accepted as equals by white society. With the end of this belief, the Zulu intelligentsia began searching for pride in its Zulu past. The resultant development in Zulu consciousness is important for an understanding of some of the debates among Inkatha, the ANC, and pan-Africanists today. In Chapter 4, I study four texts-two in the Zulu language and two in English-to examine how the image of King Shaka projected by these four authors is modified by ideological discourses, themselves the products of the relationships between Zulu and Europeans in various periods. Each of these texts produces its own distinct image of Shaka. The narratives are related to each other by their modes of rejection, contradiction, and adaptation. Although each text takes a different stand in the ideological debate, they have much in common and tend to rely on one another for some of their assumptions. In Chapter 5, I analyze the life story of Shaka as told in the Zulu oral tradition. All of the written historical texts, novels, and school textbooks as well as films, plays, and the political speeches of Buthelezi rely on this core tradition from the precolonial period. Some of these oral narratives were collected and written by missionaries and colonial administrators in the nineteenth century, and they provided the subject matter that was later manipulated, colored, changed, and reconstructed. While no single tradition

INTRODUCTION

9

was used by all later writers, this chapter analyzes the core of these tales and shows that oral traditions, like written ones, are not innocent texts that tell "what really happened." In fact, oral traditions do not even pretend to be factual; instead, they record symbolic messages that the tellers wish to transmit to future generations. Thus, the story of Shaka rooted in oral traditions turns out to be a precolonial fabrication that reflects relations between subjects and rulers in the early Zulu empire and between men and women during the period of state formation. When the oral narratives were recorded in writing, a specifically defined and delimited past was created, and the symbolic messages of the original story were lost. This book does not pretend to be a definitive text on "what really happened" in the early nineteenth century in Zululand. More archival research, interviews, and documentation are needed before such a goal can be met. However, critical historians make a good point when they claim that parts of all pasts are always negotiated, contested, and socially or ideologically constructed. What I have attempted to do herein is to find a middle road between two positions-trying to relate what is said to have really happened while at the same time remembering that the past has many faces.

NOTES 1. E. Hobsbawm and T. 0. Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); and B. Anderson, Imagined Communities-Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 2. J. Cobbing, "The Mfecane as Alibi: Thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo," Journal of African History 29 (1988), pp. 517-519. 3. I am grateful to Janis Grobbelaar for providing me with useful information about the Voortrekkers Monument. 4. Recently even the Israeli hegemonic historiography has been challenged; see, for example, B. Morris, I948 and After (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). 5. By 1849, Ordinance 3 empowered the lieutenant governor to establish a system for the administration of customary law. 6. D. Welsh, The Roots of Segregation: Native Policy in Colonial Natal, 1845-1910 (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 20-22. 7. S. Marks, Reluctant Rebellion-The 1906-1908 Disturbances in Natal (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 4. 8. Letter from Cloete to Montague, November 10, 1843, as cited in Welsh, The Roots of Segregation, p. 12. Shepstone's policy was unpopular among the colonists, who demanded a reduction in the size of the reserves so that they would be insufficient to meet the subsistence needs of the inhabitants and thereby encourage the creation of a labor supply for their own farms. 9. See, for example, J. Y. Gibson, The Story of the Zulus (London, 1903); A. T. Bryant, Olden Times in Zululand and Natal (London: Longman, 1929); E. A. Ritter, Shaka Zulu (London: Longman, 1955).

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10. M. Morris and D. Hindson, "The Disintegration of Apartheid-From Violence to Reconstruction," in G. Mosse and I. Obery, eds., South Africa Review, no. 6 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1992), pp. 152-170. 11. L. S. Senghor, "Chaka," in his Poems (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1964). 12. M. Foucault, "What Is an Author?" in D. F. Bouchard, ed., Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, trans. Bouchard and S. Simon (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), p. 130. 13. A. JanMohamed, "The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature," Critical Inquiry 12, 1 (Autumn 1985): 62-63.

1 lNKATHA AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF ZULU NATIONALISM

The war in South Africa between supporters of the African National Congress and those of the Inkatha Freedom Party is a war about the future of South Africa. The fight is over power, control of resources, methods of government, and the importance of ethnic divisions to the black community. It is also a war over symbols and interpretations of the past; Inkatha is trying by whatever means possible to use Zulu history to present its leader, Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, as the heir of King Shaka. While the ANC and the majority of black South Africans hope that the new South Africa will be a unified state in which each person will have an equal vote, Inkatha wants to retain ethnic division in order to guard its power base in Zululand and Natal. An understanding of these Inkatha concepts and of their use of the past is crucial to understanding how the party sees its role in present and future South Africa. The Zulu National Cultural Liberation Movement, now called the Inkatha Freedom Party, was founded in March 1975 by Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi and other members of the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly. The IFP associated itself with the older Zulu Cultural Movement, Inkatha KaZulu, which was founded in 1923 by King Solomon. Together, the two movements aimed to assist in the preservation of Zulu heritage and traditional values. The new movement was an adaptation of the old one, expressing the "belief that the National Unity and models for development should be based on values extrapolated from people's culture and adapted to present day needs and situation"! and proclaiming its objectives: "[T]o encourage the development of the people of KwaZulu, spiritually, economically, educationally and politically, with all progressive African and other Nationalist movements and political parties and strive for the attainment of African unity."2 The movement maintains close links with the administration of KwaZulu, one of the impoverished Bantustans (homelands) created by the South African government as part of its separate development plan. The

11

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Legislative Assembly of KwaZulu confirmed Inkatha's constitution, which determined that the president of the movement would also be the chief minister of KwaZulu and that all parliamentary or local government officials elected in KwaZulu would be members of Inkatha. In fact, most of Inkatha's senior members hold some position in the KwaZulu government, which is unusual because most other black organizations reject the Bantustan structure. One Inkatha leader claims, "We would use the devil as long as we arrive at our destination.''3 Claiming to represent all seven million Zulu in South Africa, Inkatha indeed uses any means available to force people into membership. Teachers, governmental workers, and people seeking work permits or houses are among those who fear retaliation if they do not join the movement.4 More than half of the movement members are women, a figure that can be partly explained by the fact that most IFP branches are in the Bantustan, while more than 60 percent of the male population emigrates to work in white urban areas. Female members tend to be active mainly at the local level and do not have representation in the central committee equivalent to their number. In 1976, membership in Inkatha was opened to all black South Africans, a move intended by the leaders to reinforce the movement's stress on national liberation rather than cultural aims. Opening Inkatha to non-Zulu members was one in a long series of changes designed to win the organization legitimacy as a black liberation movement. At the same time, Chief Buthelezi took pains to assure the white regime that Inkatha favored peaceful change and strengthened his ties with the Afrikaner government. From the movement's beginning, Inkatha leaders claimed to have the same goals as the ANC but to pursue them in different ways. Buthelezi often referred to his activity in the ANC Youth League in the early 1950s, and on many occasions he called on the government to free Nelson Mandela.s In the 1970s, ANC leaders who recognized the strategic potential of KwaZulu' s location, where guerrilla infiltration was taking place, wanted to maintain relations with Inkatha.6 However, Inkatha continued to strengthen its ties with the white regime and increasingly came to be seen by ANC and United Democratic Front (UDF) supporters as playing the government's game. Despite his efforts, Buthelezi was not able to maintain close relations both with Afrikaner nationalists and with black liberation leaders. The more he went on trips to Western countries to call for investment in KwaZulu, and the more he condemned strikes and boycotts organized by other movements, the more he became a traitor in the eyes of ANC and UDF supporters. They regarded his strategy as contributing to the Bantustan policy and the doctrine of separate development. As early as 1978, shortly before his death, Robert Sobukwe, the Pan African Congress (PAC) leader, told a U.S. diplomat that Buthelezi was

INKATHA & ZULU NATIONALISM

13

"the greatest enemy of African Freedom."7 Later that year a threatening, stone-throwing crowd forced Buthelezi to leave Sobukwe's funeral. 8 In November 1979, Buthelezi made public a secret meeting he had held with ANC leaders in London, but a few months later ANC president Oliver Thambo said Buthelezi had "emerged on the side of the enemy against the people."9 After the break with the ANC became obvious, Inkatha adopted a new approach: Buthelezi presented himself as the authentic leader of black South Africa, the heir of the earlier leaders of the ANC. A central tenet of the new Inkatha strategy was to attack exiled ANC leaders for spending too much time talking without taking action to solve the problems of the people in South Africa. Buthelezi also blamed these leaders for not following in the footsteps of the forefathers of the ANC. In 1979, he said in Soweto: "From gaol I hear a message from Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu telling me to go on doing what I am doing on behalf of millions of Black people."IO However, by the early 1980s, it appeared that Buthelezi could not manage the impossible: He could not be paid by Pretoria and represent the blacks of South Africa; head the KwaZulu government and talk about a united South Africa; draw support from the Zulu people on the basis of his traditional titles and present himself as the heir of the ANC leaders. The formation of the United Democratic Front in 1983 made it clear that Buthelezi and the Inkatha movement belonged in the opponent's camp,ll and the UDF challenged Inkatha's monopoly over black political life in Natal. Inkatha and the UDF have viewed each other as rivals since the UDF's formation in Natal, and each has attacked and condemned the other persistently in the media and on public platforms.l2 Other black nationalist movements saw Inkatha as collaborating with the apartheid regime and helping it to maintain its policy of divide and rule. When other antiapartheid movements called on the international community to impose sanctions on South Africa, Chief Buthelezi was traveling around the world, expressing the views of the white regime and explaining why investment was important to black South Africans. Inkatha also interrupted consumer and school boycotts, forced strikers back to work, and launched an attack against the Coalition of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) the largest trade union, by harassing its leadership and creating an alternative trade union-the United Workers Union of South Africa (UWUSA). But UWUSA, which never became a viable independent labor organization, lost credibility in July 1991 when the government admitted that it had funded it from the beginning.I3 In the 1980s, ethnic differences, which were emphasized and exacerbated by the apartheid regime, were manipulated by Inkatha in its struggle for control over the African townships bordering KwaZulu. After Nelson

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Mandela's release from prison in February 1990 and the government's decision to stop banning antiapartheid movements-when it became clear that South Africa was on its way toward black majority rule-Inkatha launched its battle for political control of South Africa. What Inkatha suggested, in a very violent way, was that the ethnic divisions in South Africa are too deeply ingrained to be erased and that KwaZulu, as the homeland of the largest ethnic group in South Africa, should not be dissolved. In July 1991, the Weekly Mail published irrefutable evidence that the government, through the police, had secretly funded Inkatha's activities. What later become known as Inkathagate was a blow to the credibility of Inkatha as an antiapartheid movement and an embarrassment to the South African government. Already estranged from the liberation movement, the IFP was now also shunned by the government, which in 1992 reached a bilateral agreement with the ANC. With only 3 percent-6 percent support nationwide, and not trusted by antiapartheid movements, Inkatha encouraged violence as a way out of its marginal status.14 National movements always reconstruct their pasts to justify present actions and to provide precedents, to draw the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, and to provide a cultural language and normative codes of acting in the world.15 Inkatha, and especially Chief Buthelezi, has mastered the use of "traditionalism." Its leaders claim to know and dictate what Zulu identity is and in what ways it should be preserved for the benefit of all South Africans. In the days of apartheid, this ideology of "new authenticity" coincided with the homeland policy of divide and rule. In the 1990s, when the main enemy has been the ANC and its plan of nonracialism in a unitary state, Inkatha has presented itself as an authentic Zulu movement that represents tradition and heritage, in contrast to the elitist ANC with its mainly urban leadership, speaking English and detached from people in the rural areas.16 The use of the "ethnic card," like violent attacks against opponents, is not new, but the more isolated Inkatha was politically, the more violent its actions became.J7 Inkatha intensified the process of inventing Zulu nationalism, creating a homogeneous Zulu identity built on the history of political consolidation under Shaka, focusing on heroism and manhood, and reconstructing a past of successful resistance to white rule. IS

THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE ZULU AS A "WARRIOR RACE"

The image of the Zulu as heroic warriors is central to the Inkatha shaping of Zulu nationalism. When he identified the Zulu nation as "brothers born of warrior stock" in a May 1991 speech, King Zwelethini was reflecting the

INKATHA&ZULUNATIONALISM

15

"neotraditional" view of Zuluness as a domain of men and war.I9 In this view, Zulu history is portrayed as a long list of wars and victories, and the Zulu kings are glorified for their heroism. As Buthelezi remarks: "Zulus today are the product of a warrior nation, a nation that no force in history has even been able to cower. We will not cower to the demands and threats of the ANC in the same way as the government cowers to their demands. We are Zulu and we will fight for the preservation ofthe Zulu nation."20 In a past so constructed that King Shaka is remembered mainly as a brilliant military leader, women have hardly any place.2I Although most political violence is directed by young men against young men, in this violent situation black men take out their frustrations and aggressions on "the only people lower in the pecking order than they are-black women." Women are daily assaulted, raped, and accused of witchcraft.22 Between 1986 and 1992, 14,500 people were killed in South Africa, some 7,500 of them in NataJ.23 The violence was initially centered in Natal, but in 1990 it spread to the townships around Johannesburg and Pretoria. By late 1992 the focus of violence had returned to Natal, where only a few townships have been left untouched by attacks and revenge attacks, crime, and a growing culture of violence.24 In KwaZulu and Natal, where the population is overwhelmingly Zulu, the violence has few ethnic overtones. But when Inkatha attempted to break into an area where the ANC was more strongly established, the violence took on ethnic overtones, although most such battles are better defined as between migrant workers and township residents. Since 1990 there have been several violent incidents around hostels in black townships. Hostels house workers who come to work in the urban areas, leaving their families in the rural areas. Migrant workers living in single-sex hostels were considered unsophisticated and ignorant by the more urbanized township residents and were generally blamed for the high crime rate, particularly rape.25 Many of the hostels became Inkatha strongholds, and violence broke out between the hostel workers and township residents in several areas. In March 1992, 52 people were killed and 389 injured in Alexandra alone. Other incidents have taken place at train stations, and commuters of different ethnic backgrounds and political affiliations have been killed. Attackers shoot randomly at commuters waiting on platforms, generally during rush hours, then often board the trains and shoot and stab commuters.26 In 1992 there were 302 attacks on trains, resulting in 278 deaths and 563 injuries.27 While there are many reasons for this ongoing war, it largely reflects the struggle for political dominance between Inkatha and the ANC, and Inkatha supporters seem to be the aggressors in most of the incidents. One example is described by the international human rights organization Africa Watch:

Inkatha People Carrying "Customary Weapons"

Howard Varney

Howard Varney

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17

On the night of 17 June 1992, a group of more than 200 men, armed with knives, pangas and guns, attacked residents of the Boipatong township and the Slovo Park squatter camp, a pro-ANC area, causing 45 deaths and at least 30 injuries. Many of the victims were children and women, including a pregnant woman and two babies.28

Another example cited by Amnesty International is an incident in which at least fifteen people were killed during a massive armed attack by Inkatha supporters on Bruntville township near the Mooi River in the Natal Midlands on December 4, 1991. Mali Maphalala, a resident of the township, described the opening moments of the attack. At about 4:30 AM he saw what seemed to be as many as a thousand men carrying spears, pangas, guns and knobkerries coming out from the hostel gates. These men were running very quickly into the township .... I could hear people outside whistling and screaming warnings. Less than five minutes later, the first of this large group of hostel dwellers had reached the front of our house. I observed a woman just across the street being attacked by a group of these armed men. She was crying for help, but I could not help her because there were too many of them. I heard later that she had been stabbed several times ... and that she died from her wounds. 29

This attack took place three days after Bruntville residents had marched to Mooi River, where they presented a petition to the local police and government authorities. Their demands included police enforcement of the law prohibiting the carrying of "customary weapons" in public. This demand has been put forward since the late 1980s by community organizers as well as by local and international human rights organizations, who describe the fear that entire communities have of Inkatha impis. Although the police arrested and disarmed ANC supporters who were carrying "regular" arms, they did not stop Inkatha supporters, claiming they did not want to offend the Zulu, whose custom is to carry cultural weapons. For a long time the South African police were blamed for allowing Inkatha to kill ANC people and for allowing the continuation of the cycle of violence as a way of delaying a transfer of power in South Africa. Rumors of Inkatha members being trained by the South Africa Defense Forces were backed up by firsthand reports in 1991.30 Officials of human rights organizations have argued that the South African police and, even more so, the KwaZulu police "had demonstrated a pattern of bias against supporters of the ANC. The bias was manifested in several ways, including a refusal to take preventative measures to halt attacks, actively assisting attackers by shooting at ANC supporters, transporting supporters of Inkatha to attack ANC areas, and using teargas and bullets to prevent ANC supporters from defending themselves."3I These

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allegations were later confirmed by the Goldstone commission, or the Commission of Inquiry Regarding the Prevention of Public Violence and Intimidation headed by Judge Richard Goldstone, which was formed as part of the National Peace Accord of 1991.32 Not all of the attackers have been from Inkatha. In a press conference in June 1992, Inkatha reported that since the signing of the peace accord on September 14, 1991, more than 120 attacks on Inkatha officers had occurred, resulting in more than twenty deaths.33

CAN INVENTED TRADITIONAL WEAPONS KILL?

When the public pressure to disarm the Zulu of their "traditional weapons" grew, and when the authorities were reminded that the police should disarm Inkatha because the carrying of weapons was illegal, President de Klerk gave legal support to police inactivity by amending the law. On August 30, 1990, de Klerk introduced an amendment to the 1891 law, stating that blacks could carry arms if they were "able to prove that [they] had the bona fide intention to carry such dangerous weapons in accordance with traditional Zulu usages, customs or religions."34 In accordance with this amendment, the police did not disarm the Zulu of their allegedly traditional weapons. The Legal, Resource Center, a South African human rights organization, then appealed to the Supreme Court to set aside this "illegal amendment" to the Natal Code of Zulu Law. In asking the court to declare the amendment permitting the carrying of the cultural weapons illegal, the center's attorneys used three main arguments.35 First, they claimed that these traditional weapons, which include spears, assegais, axes, pangas, sharpened sticks and poles, assorted clubs, and knobkerries, are dangerous and were used in at least 35 percent of the killings in Natal between 1985 and 1990. Second, they argued that the carrying of these "customary weapons" is wrongly considered to be in accordance with Zulu traditions and customs, because the law preventing the Zulu from carrying them had been in existence since 1891. In this period of almost one hundred years, traditional arms were rarely used and were never carried in public with the intention of harming others. Finally, they claimed that allowing only the Zulu to carry weapons gave "preferential treatment to one ethnic group in Natal over the other ethnic groups." Quoting the official census, the Legal Resource Center showed that some 26,671 inhabitants of Natal are South Sotho and 117,940 are Xhosa. Indeed, TSolomon Lechesa Tsenoli, the appellant represented by the center, is a non-Zulu Natal resident. Tsenoli claimed that "the special dispensation to those who adhere to Zulu usages, customs and religions is and will be perceived to be a form of political favoritism

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19

which will only exacerbate existing violence and widen cleavages in society."36 One of the affidavits for the appellant was from an anthropologist who gave expert testimony on the invention of the use of traditional Zulu weapons by Inkatha. The anthropologist, Mary De Haas, was asked to define "traditional Zulu usages, customs or religions" in light of her research in the field. She wrote: I am advised that there is a distinction between customs and local usages. To qualify as such a custom must be old, reasonable, continued without interruptions, certain in respect of its nature in general or in the locality where it is alleged to exist, and the person who it is to affect, and to that extent may be inconsistent with the general law of the country and may be said to have replaced it. To qualify as such a local usage need not be old but it must be generally known and familiar, certain, reasonable, and must not be contrary to positive law or contra bonos mores. These principles relating to the proof of customs and usages apply equally to religions.

Citing other anthropologists, De Haas had two arguments. First, she claimed, Zulu culture (but it might just as well be Afrikaans, Jewish or English culture) has no analytical reality outside the minds of particular people; it is not a "thing" which exists independently of people's conceptions of it. It has no fixed and immutable boundaries; and it certainly does not encompass or constrain their every action. Instead it is a highly changeable, often apparently contradictory and chameleon like set of shared meanings and mental constructs some of which individuals choose to use (but many equally well choose not to use) in their daily lives and deciding how things should be done or explained.

Alternatively, De Haas explained that the use of these dangerous weapons has been prohibited since 1891, and "no usage, custom or religion which necessitated the carrying of weapons can be said to have survived this period of one hundred years" during which the prohibition was in force. In accepting the expert witness's arguments that the carrying of "customary Zulu weapons" was an invention by the Inkatha movement aimed at manipulating Zulu symbols of the past for present mobilization, and in declaring the amendment introduced by President de Klerk void, Justice Didcott's ruling was a victory for human rights activists and for antiapartheid anthropologists as well as for the historiography of the invention of traditionalism. In an endeavor to build a bridge between South African academic discourse and "common knowledge," Didcott wrote: "Hostility has been displayed time and again during recent years between its [Inkatha's] members or supporters on the one side and those adhering on

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the other to the political cause of the African National Congress and the United Democratic Front. That is common knowledge." Despite this decision, the killings did not stop, nor did the carrying of axes, pangas, sharpened sticks and poles, or other traditional weaponswhich Inkatha insists are only carried during cultural events.37 The law was amended again in February 1992 to allow the carrying of "dangerous weapons" in "cultural events," and the Legal Resource Center has again appealed to the court. This time it is asking the court to rule that the term cultural event is too vague because it is open to different interpretations and manipulations, and that the Zulu should therefore be prohibited from carrying customary arms even during events that are allegedly cultural.38 Traditional weapons are still used to kill and injure people, and Chief Buthelezi has declared that he has no intention of disarming his men. In a press statement announcing a withdrawal of Inkatha and KwaZulu from negotiations about the future of South Africa unless, among other demands, the ANC military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe "be immediately disbanded and Umkhonto personnel be demobilized," Buthelezi said, "As President of IFP, and as Chief Minister of KwaZulu, I will never under any circumstances ever ask anybody for permission to carry a Zulu weapon. The nationwide blanket ban on the carrying of cultural weapons, under the guise of them being dangerous weapons, will be unenforceable. "39 In a speech on Shaka Day in October 1992, Buthelezi explained why disarming the Zulu of their traditional weapons hurts their identity: Taking away the cultural weapons of the Zulus means depriving my people of their chosen and traditional tools of self-identification. It is a devious strategy to destroy the Zulu ethnic identity and consciousness, and to intimidate them in the most militant expression of their identity. There is an orchestrated plot to culturally and ethnically castrate the Zulu people through intimidation and provocation. 40

INKATHA AND THE INVENTION OF THE ZULU PAST

As we shall see in the coming chapters, the construction of Zulu nationalism was a process in which both Zulu and whites took part, each for their own interests. Inkatha's version is simply an addition to a long history of inventing the Zulu past. Inkatha manipulates the past both to draw support from the Zulu and to gain legitimacy as an "authentic" movement in the eyes of other black nationalist groups in South Africa and around the world. By frequently mentioning his royal ancestry, Buthelezi presents himself to his Zulu listeners as the appropriate heir to the old leaders and proves to others that he is not a puppet of the white regime. Stressing that his legitimacy did not originate in Pretoria, he has emphasized that he "was

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21

the traditional prime minister to King Cyprian for 16 years, long before there was any KwaZulu Legislative Assembly."4I Buthelezi has also reminded his audience that: Long before there was a racist government, KwaZulu was there. KwaZulu was even there long before modern South Africa was formed. The great exploits of King Shaka ka Senzangakhona established the Zulu Kingdom as a powerful sovereign Kingdom with influences which reached down to the Caledon River in the Cape Province and far north into what is now Mocambique and also into the Transvaai.42

Buthelezi's status as a traditional leader has served him well in his negotiations with Pretoria. 43 Since the 1960s, the government policy enforced ethnic boundaries for South African blacks as a way to legitimate its homeland policy. This policy has made it possible for Buthelezi to use his position as a traditional leader to press for his political goals, and he has often found it effective to present a rather unique interpretation of the past. Inkatha's handling of opposition from the Zulu king and from opposition parties in KwaZulu provide two examples. First, Buthelezi persuaded Pretoria to pass a resolution that the Zulu king must stand above politics by arguing that such disassociation was traditionally the case. This resolution discouraged the king from publicizing his opposition to Inkatha because he feared that he would be seen as violating tradition-which was, of course, the basis of his own legitimacy. Second, Inkatha asked the South African government in 1978 to prevent all other parties from taking part in elections in KwaZulu on the basis that the Zulu traditionally made decisions by consensus and did not let disputes separate them. In both instances, Inkatha presented a very particular interpretation of Zulu history, one whose benefits to them were obvious. However, in 1992, when Inkatha was marginalized after the ANC signed a bilateral agreement with the National Party, Buthelezi threatened that Inkatha would leave the negotiations unless the Zulu king was invited to represent the Zulu people. Buthelezi did not accept the suggested compromise that the Zulu king be invited together with some other traditional leaders. Thus, the king who was "above politics" was once again used to strengthen the position of the president of Inkatha. Inkatha claims not only that it does not reconstruct history (but just tells it "the way it happened") but also that it has a uniquely Zulu way of understanding the past. The idea that there is a unique Zulu concept of history was first introduced by the journalist and novelist Jordan Ngubane.44 Writing in exile in the United States, Ngubane maintained that whites cannot understand African history the way the Zulu do because they have different conceptions of time and different ways of thinking about the past. These ideas eventually found their way into Buthelezi's speeches and into

22

INVENTING SHAKA

Killie Campbell Africana Library, Durban

Chief Gatsha Buthelezi

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23

articles by Simon Maphalala and Oscar Dhlomo, two of Inkatha's leading intellectuals. Cautioning that the Zulu narrator of history should not be confused with the European historian, Ngubane pointed out that "where the historian and the reporter are supposedly objective and concern themselves with bare facts, and where the historian seeks to deal with events and their causes and effects, the umlandi is creatively subjective."45 What, then, is the Inkatha conception of history? And how does its written history differ from other versions? Because there is no official historical work by Inkatha, one can only investigate the movement's claim of unique views through speeches, articles, and novels written by its leaders and supporters and through the textbooks being used in KwaZulu schools. An analysis of this material does not support the notion that there is a distinctive Zulu conception of history, which leads to the suspicion that this claim has more to do with the rhetoric of nationalism than with a genuinely unique approach to the past. Indeed, one is struck by the similarities between Inkatha claims to this effect and views expressed by other nationalistic movements. Particularly striking are the similarities between the rhetoric of Afrikaner nationalists and Inkatha leaders, both of whom share the same view of their leaders as the most important shapers of events and tend to glorify and use the past in orderto draw support for their claims in the present. Inkatha's definition of the term nationalism remains vague. Here we witness another characteristic of the movement's rhetoric: the tendency to underdefine a subject under discussion. This lack of precision allows for the presentation of different ideas to different audiences without fear of obvious contradiction. For example, Chief Buthelezi has failed to make clear distinctions between the Zulu and other Africans and tends to refer to both by the terms we or our people. Whites is subject to a similar lack of precise definition; the term is used to refer to Afrikaners, the British, or both, depending on the occasion. Even without a precise definition of the term, however, there is a clear distinction between Inkatha attitudes toward the two groups. The British are portrayed as enemies of the Zulu people who are responsible for the destruction of their kingdom, while the Boers are presented as neighbors with whom the Zulu have long had much in common. In a 1971 speech at the University of Stellenbosch, Chief Buthelezi told his mostly Afrikaner audience: "Your people were forged in the African wilderness. In the rest of Africa, black people had a confrontation with white foreign settlers, whereas in South Africa the white people were indigenous." He added, "The Afrikaners, just like my own people, were victims of colonization for a very long time."46 Buthelezi's claim corresponds to Inkatha's understanding of the Afrikaners' rise to political and economic dominance in South Africa as a model for black development,

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proof that change can be achieved through an ongoing process of evolution rather than revolution. The discrepancy between the attitudes toward Afrikaners and the British seems to be directly related to lnkatha's attempt to maintain its relationship with the Afrikaner regime by emphasizing the good relationship between the two groups in the past. One example of Inkatha's smoothing over of past problems can be found in its treatment of the execution of Piet Retief and the group of trekkers who came to ask the Zulu king for land in 1838. Versions of the event told by members of the United Democratic Front or teachers who support the ANC hold that Dingane, the Zulu king, was fully aware that the settlement of the trekkers marked the first stage in a white conquest of his kingdom and that he ordered the killing of Retief and the trekkers in an attempt to defend his territory.47 For this reason, many blacks view Dingane as the first black leader to oppose white domination. However, the Inkatha view of the incident revolves around a sad misunderstanding that originated from differences in customs. In this version, obviously, Dingane receives no praise for trying to defend the homeland.48 Inkatha historian Simon Maphalala wrote: Retief and his men moved about looking at the huts. In one of the huts there was a Zulu woman who was pregnant. The shock of seeing whites for the first time resulted in her giving birth prematurely. This incident was reported to Dingane. As superstition was still rife in those days the king came to the conclusion that Retief and his men were 'Abathaki', i.e. people who practice witchcraft. Consequently an order was given for them to be put to death. 49 Most white writings claim that Dingane ordered his soldiers to kill the trekkers by shouting "kill the wizards," and Maphalala attempts to come to terms with this claim not by denying it but by apologetically explaining its cause. This acceptance of the Afrikaner interpretation of Dingane's encounter with Retief is especially significant in view of Inkatha claims that it opposes politically motivated historical revisionism and that most books written by whites are biased. Inkatha's position on white historians veers from blaming them for trying to ridicule Zulu history to charging them with being unable to understand it because they live in a different world and have different values and conceptions of history. Buthelezi argues that whites are almost never reliable as sources for the study of Zulu history because they never understood the Zulu revolution and have always mistreated Zulu heroes. At a 1979 conference commemorating the centennial of the AngloZulu War of 1879, Buthelezi devoted his speech to bias in historical analysis.so He suggested that traditional white views of critical historical events do not tally with black versions of the same events. Buthelezi singled out

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25

historian Thomas Rodney Davenport, accusing him of a "woeful ignorance" of contemporary black history and arguing that the professor's flawed analyses would cause tragic distortions because they will be read by future generations as true and correct renditions of history because of the writer's academic stature.51 A. T. Bryant, a missionary and amateur historian whose books rank among the most important sources for the student of Zulu history, is another white writer whom Buthelezi criticized for bias in historical analysis, pointing out that bias can infect even valuable collections of information. "Dr. Bryant chronicled quite a lot of important things for the Zulu people. But his contempt for the Zulu people for example, quite apart from some apocryphal things which are taken at present as gospel truth, since he wrote them, is enough to underscore my point about the different people, black and white, who were in conflict, and who remain in conflict up to this day."52 Such criticism of white historians is often accompanied by the claim that one should place more reliance on oral evidence in writings about Zulu history. Buthelezi refers to his mother as the leading authority on Zulu history until her death, but oral evidence is not always heeded in Inkatha works. Indeed, Buthelezi himself uses copious footnotes in the academic style and generally refers to written material in published versions of his speeches. While Inkatha textbooks (which will be discussed in more detail later) stress the importance of the oral tradition, they omit all mention of the changing nature of oral recording or of the variants in tradition in different parts of society, giving the impression that the oral tradition is a monolithic block of evidence, more accurate than written histories and reflecting the knowledge of the people. However, this idea is not justified because "accepted" traditions, that is, those used primarily in correspondence with or as a response to written material, are usually those held by the royal family.

THE SHAKAN REVOLUTION AND NATIONALISM

"Where would we be in South Africa had he [King Shaka] not been assassinated by his brothers? "53

In Zulu politics of the 1980s and 1990s, King Shaka is viewed as one of the most important and engaging figures of Zulu history. Inkatha leaders regularly portray him as one of the greatest personalities in world history and describe the formation of the Zulu kingdom as his singlehanded achievement. Shaka is favorably compared to such historical greats as the "Lord Jesus Christ, the Prophet Mohammed" or "in the next rung ... greats such

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INVENTING SHAKA

as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther, Calvin."54 Shaka is said to be a genius, "a man who lived in quest of knowledge to the end of his life," and a great commander of arms.55 In 1970 the KwaZulu government proclaimed the anniversary of Shaka's death, September 24, "Zulu National Day." In 1972 a public ceremony took place on his grave at Stanger,56 a celebration that became the occasion for an annual mass meeting beginning in 1978. The annual Shaka Day ceremony has become an important political gathering for Inkatha members, and key political speeches are given each year by the movement's leaders. The words on King Shaka's tombstone are recited on many occasions: He is praised for uniting different peoples into one large nation and for bestowing upon that nation its most important values and traditions. As Buthelezi put it in his 1974 speech, "Our hearts should bleed when we think of the high moral tone he set up for us, when viewed against the degeneration that has come to us with civilization. When we look at the moral code of King Shaka's reign, it has the same 'Thou Shalt Nots' as the Ten Commandments."57 According to Jordan Ngubane, Shaka's achievements as a military leader and administrator enabled him to realize his ideas of unity. "If he were to rise from his grave today, Shaka would point out that his truly enduring contribution to human progress was to demonstrate how to found a nation on the basis of a clearly stated ideal."58 Although it is not clear what Shaka's "stated ideal" would be, he is said to have been the first black leader to understand the importance of African unity. He is therefore praised not only as the founder of the Zulu kingdom but as the first black nationalist. In addition to paying homage to Shaka's achievements, contemporary Zulu leaders blame white historians for not understanding his greatness and for doing him an injustice. As Oscar Dhlomo stated on Shaka Day in 1978, "There are still some 'pseudo historians' who go out of their way to mislead the reading public and our children. These pseudo historians portray King Shaka as a blood thirsty tyrant and unscrupulous war-monger and a true adherent of Machiavellian realpolitik."59 The discrepancy between Shaka's accomplishments and the way they are portrayed by white historians is a central issue in many Inkatha speeches. IFP leaders accuse white historians of racism and prejudice against the Zulu king. References to King Shaka as "chief," or citations of his name without the appropriate title, are taken as a sign of disrespect for his memory. Such acute attention to signs of respect often leads to confusion. For example, appreciation of a common comparison between King Shaka and Napoleon is varied: when white historians make the comparison, it is taken to be derogatory; yet the same juxtaposition is often used by blacks as a means of glorifying Shaka. Thus, Simon Maphalala, comparing the two

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leaders, asked why Napoleon is still remembered as a majestic commander while King Shaka stands as a symbol of cruelty. In his words, "Because the Shaka revolution was, like any other revolution, very bloody, historians refer to him as a tyrant, dictator and Attila. But if his achievements for Southern Africa are viewed against the background of Napoleon I, many more positive things could be said."60 The issue of a lost nationalist utopia crops up constantly in speeches by IFP leaders and has apparently become an integral part of Zulu history. Jordan Ngubane suggested the idea, later taken up by Inkatha, that Shaka introduced nationalism into the region and that, if his brothers had not killed him, all the blacks in southern Africa would have formed one nation. Not only would the situation of black South Africans have been very different today, but this unified nation would have changed the entire continent. Thus, when Buthelezi presents himself as King Shaka's heir, he is also setting forth his intention to accomplish Shaka's goal of uniting all black Africans.6I In 1979, after an attempt on his life, Buthelezi called on the comparison by recalling that King Shaka was killed out of jealousy and pointing out that Shaka' s death stopped the progress of black nationalism. In an attempt to appeal to radicals without giving up the trademarks of traditional legitimacy, Inkatha portrays Shaka not only as the first national leader but also as the first leader to suffer at the hands of the white minority, thereby implicating whites in Shaka's assassination. The assassination of King Shaka, the most important leader of his century, not only dealt a staggering blow to African nationalism but was a despicable act of jealousy.62 In this view, the assassination was politically wrong not only because it put a stop to the progress of nationalism but also because it was crucial for the creation of white policies that placed the blacks in political and economic subjugation to whites in South Africa. According to an Inkatha textbook: Some historians say Mnkabayi [Shaka's aunt] was responsible for the plot to kill Shaka. It was Mnkabayi who helped fight Sigujana so as to gain the Zulu chieftainship. We know that Shaka fought extensively in the whole country. There are rumours which say Mnkabayi was influenced by some people who wanted the whole of South Africa. They knew that it would be difficult for them to get the land. Shaka was then a big chief everybody was scared of, and it was not easy to defeat him.63

Here we are presented with the unsupported information that the motivation behind Shaka' s murder was not jealousy but greed for land. The identity of the people who wanted the land, and who therefore influenced Mkabayi to plot against Shaka, is never stated. It seems, however, that greed for land in South Africa is to be associated with whites. While making no explicit claims about whites and their responsibility for Shaka's

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death, the text is written in such a way that black schoolchildren can easily identify "people who want the whole of South Africa" as whites. Inkatha relies so heavily on the past to define its values, beliefs, and norms that when the past and the present do not tally, the past must be adapted. The portrayal of Shaka as a national leader who tried to unite all the blacks in South Africa is one of the ways that Inkatha attempts to make him a symbol for all blacks in the present.

THE ZULU PAST IN INKATHA'S TEXTBOOKS

"Do you think Shaka did good or bad in uniting the people? "64

In 1978, Inkatha added UBuntu Botho, or good citizenship, to the curriculum in all KwaZulu schools. UBuntu Botho, which is taught one hour a week at all grade levels, introduces students to the ideology of the Inkatha movement, including its aim to "correct" the distorted views that students learn from books written by whites. The citizenship textbooks describe Zulu history as Inkatha wants the young Zulu to understand it and are therefore an important source of information for Inkatha' s view of the past. The official syllabus of UBuntu Botho stresses black history and deals with: The concept of race; rulers and nation builders in Black Africa before the advent of White rule; colonization; the struggle for liberation from white rule; liberation movements such as the OAU, Pan Africanism, African Nationalism and the role of Zulu people; role of educational, religious and other organizations in the struggle for liberation; the significance of the Black American's struggle; the struggle in South Africa-the land question, riots, liberalism, racial discrimination, the homelands and the future.65

This rather confused specification of content is characteristic of all Inkatha textbooks. Most of the history syllabus is devoted to the struggles of liberation movements in Africa and to the role of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Apart from the descriptions of these struggles, there is no mention of black history or of the rulers and nation-builders before the advent of white rule. The introduction of Inkatha textbooks into KwaZulu schools was met by strong opposition to the forced imposition of a curriculum reflecting the Inkatha position. The principle of using the educational system to propagate political aims was severely criticized, and political opponents of lnkatha asserted that the latter's use of the educational system of KwaZulu

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29

was further proof that it is impossible to work within the apartheid system and to fight it at the same time.66 Because membership in Inkatha was a requirement for teachers in KwaZulu, the introduction of the new textbooks was seen as imposing yet another restriction on teachers' freedom.67 Opponents also view UBuntu Botho as designed to reinforce ethnic differences and to strengthen Zulu ethnic identity because the teaching materials are written in Zulu. The language of instruction has served as a political symbol in South Africa since students and parents first rejected the government scheme to divide blacks by teaching them in their ethnic languages and requested that English be the language of instruction, not only for the sake of unity but because it gives high school graduates a better chance of pursuing higher education or careers. After years of fighting for-and gaining-the abolition of education in ethnic languages, the introduction of a curriculum in Zulu seemed to play into the hands of the apartheid policy of separate development. The frequent use of ethnographic maps in the textbooks also suggested that those responsible for the curriculum supported the government plan of tribalization. Inkatha textbooks can be compared to other history readers only in their treatment of past Zulu kingdoms, for other topics are hardly mentioned in the Inkatha texts.6& The absence of descriptions of processes of industrialization, which came as part of colonialism and the development of the capitalist state, is especially surprising in the Inkatha texts because at least half of the students' fathers are away from home, working in the towns. As in Afrikaner textbooks, the biographies of leaders are presented as the only explanation of historical events, but there is unevenness even in that area. For example, the life and actions of Cetshwayo, the Zulu king who fought the British, are discussed in detail, but the reign of his uncle, Dingane, is hardly mentioned. Mpande, Cetshwayo's father, is said to have mostly been a peaceful king, the first to die of old age. Shaka receives the greatest share of attention in UBuntu Botho, and his story begins with a celebratory flourish: "We are indeed proud of our chief Shaka the child of Senzgakhona! A hero above other heroes who would spear and demolish other tribes."69 Shaka's childhood is recounted in great detail, and the authors claim that he "was not an ordinary child, and many things showed that he would indeed be famous as an adult."70 The books praise Shaka's heroism and stress that "there was no discrimination" in the kingdom under his reign. They present Shaka as a model leader who united the people, a task that the authors claim is being carried out today by Inkatha. "But there is hope that it [self-rule] will return. Especially because very often succeeding chiefs have gone to Dukuza with the entire people to pay homage to chief Shaka, to commemorate him and to recount his famous deeds in recognition."71 From the textbook we also learn that the Shaka Day gathering has an

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important function: It is meant to soothe the anger of Shaka because ancestors were traditionally worshiped out of fear of punishment. Shaka had cursed his people at the scene of his assassination, and the conquest of South Africa by whites was thus a punishment for Shaka's murder. Like another well-known emperor, Shaka is said to have looked at his assassins and said: "'What have I done to you Dingane? What have I done to you Mhlangana? Now that you are killing me it will be ruled by birds of the wilderness."' And the text continues, "Indeed it turned out that way. The Zulu was conquered after that."72 The story of this curse (only one of many examples of the continuing influence of white education and of history books written by whites) is central for understanding Shaka's role as the ancestor of the Zulu. 73 Because white domination of South Africa is viewed almost as the direct result of Shaka's curse, Inkatha claims to work toward the end of this white domination by praising Shaka and cooling his anger. This view of Shaka as an ancestor also highlights the lnkatha concept of the Zulu as an extended family and the confused notion of nationalism that it conveys to the students. The Inkatha textbooks present the nation as among the most valuable of entities created by God. And, in fact, with the claim that "we were made by the creator who made Nations from a common Humanity," the Inkatha texts invoke God as the architect of historical events, a practice once common in Afrikaner history books but dropped from later, more liberal texts.7 4 Nation and nationalism are perhaps the most common nouns in the Inkatha texts, yet, as the reference to God suggests, these terms present an incoherent message because they are never clearly defined. An explanation that a nation is something like an extended family, with national leaders as fathers (no mothers!), seems to single out one ethnic group, that is, the Zulu. Yet, in other places in the texts, nation appears to refer to a larger entity. Because the word we sometimes refers to the Zulu, sometimes to Africans, and still other times to all black South Africans, it is not clear whether God intended to bless Zulu nationalism or black nationalism in general. The confusion surrounding the concept of unity is also revealing. In explaining how nations were created, the textbooks stress step-by-step development, beginning with the slow process of gathering kinsmen into "regions." Uniting these regions into nations was possible only through the agency of great leaders such as Shaka or Moshoeshoe "because they knew how to unite a multitude of people to understand one another, respect similar laws and customs."75 Although the authors stress the importance of unity, it is never clear precisely who is supposed to be united. Moreover, while the unity of the Zulu is stressed above all, other kinds of affinities are also mentioned. The history section of the first textbook opens with the words, "We are Zulu. We do not doubt ourselves. We pride ourselves on

INKATHA&ZULUNATIONALISM

31

being Zulu. But it does not mean that we have to shut our eyes as blinds, and not know about our kin in Africa."76 This oneness of all African people is mentioned primarily in terms of cultural affinity. The creators of the curriculum seem to have been greatly concerned with the question of unity and disunity and have made the understanding of these concepts one of the central aims of study. African unity never means South Africa, but refers to Africa as a whole, and whenever the books refer to unity, they suggest the distant and diffuse vision of a united continent. However, disunity always refers to circumstances within Natal or South Africa. The notions of the cultural affinity of all Africans and panAfricanism (the Inkatha version) are used to hide the unclear notions of nationalism and unity that Inkatha propagates. The authors write: "Let us emphasize the unforgettable history of the Zulu people as built by chief Shaka, and learn from it so that even today when we want to build an African Nation, we know what things we must note and do."77 But what is the African nation that Inkatha wants to build? If it is to be derived from the notion of extended family, the view of Shaka as the nation's father and Buthelezi as his heir, it must be the Zulu nation and not the united Azania that the African National Movement was struggling for. The confused messages in Inkatha's textbooks reflect the contradictions in the organization's ideology, and speeches by Inkatha officials are as vague and nonspecific as the texts in terms of exactly what their references to unity mean. Whether it is the unity of all the Zulu or the unity of blacks, whether nationalism is another name for ethnicity or refers to the struggle of all black South Africans to gain power in their state, these politically potent distinctions remain blurred in Inkatha pronouncements.

NOTES References to unpublished speeches of Buthelezi not otherwise cited are to the archives of the Killie Campbell Library, Gerald Mare's collection of Inkatha documents; or to the Truman Institute Library Inkatha Collection. 1. S. M. E. Bengu, "Cultural Liberation," Lecture No. 4, University of Natal, Durban, 1977. 2. Inkatha constitution, quoted in South Africa Institute of Race Relations, Information Sheet No. 1, November 18, 1977. 3. Musa Zondi, chairman of Inkatha Youth Brigade, interview in Work in Progress 47 (March 1987). 4. Interview with Simon Maphalala, a member of Inkatha's central committee, December 24, 1984, Berkeley, California. 5. B. Temkin, Gatsha Buthelezi-Zulu Stateman (Cape Town: Purnell, 1976), p. 53. 6. T. Karis, "Buthelezi, Inkatha and the African National Congress," paper given at Yale-New England Southern African Workshop, April24-25, 1981.

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7. Quoted in ibid. 8. South Africa Institute of Race Relations, Survey of Race Relations, (Johannesburg: SAIRR, 1978), p. 30. 9. Oliver Thambo, press conference in Lusaka, July 23, 1980. 10. M. G. Buthelezi, speech in Soweto, October 21, 1979 (Truman Institute Library Inkatha Collection). 11. The UDF was a loose federation of some six hundred antiapartheid organizations, including trade unions, women's organizations, civic movements, youth groups, and religious communities. Its aim was to work inside South Africa for a nonviolent end to apartheid. It established a network to deal with such issues as housing, forced removals, and transportation, and it also offered an outlet for protest. 12. Richard de Villiers, "Inkatha and the State-UDF Under Attack," Work in Progress 39 (October 1985). 13. M. Ottaway, South Africa-The Struggle for a New Order (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institute, 1993), p. 66. 14. See for example polls in the International Herald Tribune, February 14, 1993. 15. G. Mare, Brothers Born of Warrior Blood-Politics and Ethnicity in South Africa (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1992). 16. Adam and Moodley note that the ANC leaders participate in traditional ceremonies in "much the same way that Westerners enjoy folk dances." H. Adam and K. Moodley, "Political Violence, 'Tribalism,' and Inkatha," Journal of Modern African Studies 30, 3 (1992): 485-510. 17. See Adam and Moodley, "Political Violence, 'Tribalism,' and Inkatha." 18. G. Mare and G. Hamilton, An Appetite for Power: Buthelezi's lnkatha and South Africa (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987), p. 23. 19. Mare, Brothers Born of Warrior Blood, pp. 67-69. 20. M.G. Buthelezi, speech on Shaka Day, Hlabisa District, October 4, 1992 (Truman Institute Library Inkatha Collection). 21. Shireen Hassim, citing lnkatha's textbooks, shows that even at home women are seen as having a minor role. One textbook states, "In the family the man is head. The woman knows that she is not equal to her husband." S. Hassim, "Family, Motherhood and Zulu Nationalism: The Politics of the Inkatha Women's Brigade," paper presented at Conference on Ethnicity and Political Violence in Natal, Pietermaritzburg, May 1992. 22. S. Marks, "The Origins of Ethnic Violence in South Africa," Michael Wade Memorial Lecture, Jerusalem, 1991. 23. The statistics for 1986-1991 were provided by the Black Sash. The Human Rights Commission provided the information about the number of people killed in 1992. 24. Africa Watch, South Africa-Half Hearted Reform: The Official Response to the Rising Tide of Violence (New York: Africa Watch, 1993). 25. Ottaway, South Africa-The Struggle for a New Order, p. 67. 26. Africa Watch, South Africa-Half Hearted Reform, p. 37. 27. Human Rights Commission Monthly Report (Johannesburg: December 1992). 28. Africa Watch, South Africa-Half Hearted Reform, p. 40. 29. Amnesty International, South Africa-State of Fear: Security Force Complicity in Torture and Political Killings, 1990-1992 (London: Amnesty International, 1992), p. 55. 30. Some two hundred Inkatha members were trained in "offensive warfare"

INKATHA & ZULU NATIONALISM

33

by the SADF in 1986, and hundreds of IFP members were trained in Israel, sponsored by Buthelezi and financed by the South African government. See the allegations of Israeli former intelligence advisor Ari Ben Menashe as cited in the Weekly Mail, March 19, 1993. 31. Africa Watch, South Africa-Half Hearted Reform, introduction. 32. The National Peace Accord was an attempt to address the causes of violence and to take concrete steps to halt the killing. Representatives of all sectors of South African society, including religious groups, labor, business, and major political parties, agreed that a commission of inquiry (the Goldstone commission) would investigate serious incidents of violence and provide recommendations on steps to prevent further violence. I am grateful to Judge Richard Goldstone for sending me the reports of his commission. 33. M.G. Buthelezi, press statement, June 8, 1992. 34. Code of Zulu Law, Amendment to Section 117(3)(a)(vi). 35. I am grateful to Howard Vamey, an attorney of the Legal Resource Center, for providing me with the material on the "cultural weapons" cases. 36. For this quotation and what follows on the case, see Solomon Lechesa Tsenoli versus the State President of the Republic of South Africa, Case 772/91, Supreme Court of South Africa, Durban and Coast Local Division, 1991. 37. Government Notice No. 719, published in Government Gazette 13801, 320 (February 28, 1992). 38. Jabulani Emmanuel Sithole versus the Minister of Law and Order, Supreme Court of South Africa, Durban and Coast Local Division, 1992. 39. M.G. Buthelezi, press statement, September 27, 1992. 40. M.G. Buthelezi speech on Shaka Day, October 4, 1992. 41. Quoted in Sunday Times, November 6, 1983. 42. M. G. Buthelezi, speech in Jabulani Amphitheater, Soweto, December 8, 1991. 43. In a book that is very critical of such negotiations, Mzala argues that "honorable" chiefs were expected to refuse to serve the racist regime. Mzala also questions Buthelezi' s claims to his titles, arguing that the chief is not a son of a king and should not be called a prince, nor can he claim to be "primer" because it was never a hereditary title. Mzala, Gatsha Buthelezi: Chief with a Double Agenda (London: Zed Press, 1988). 44. J. K. Ngubane, Ushaba (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1974). 45. Ngubane, Ushaba. 46. M. G. Buthelezi, speech at the University of Stellenbosch, September 1971. 47. Interviews with black history teachers, Lamontville High School, August 30 and September 10, 1984, Lamontville. 48. Dingane is portrayed by the Inkatha as the bad king because he killed Shaka. 49. S. Maphalala, "The Black Man's Interpretation of South African History," paper presented at the University of Stellenbosch, October 14, 1981. 50. M. G. Buthelezi, "The Bias of Historical Analysis," opening address at the Centennial of Anglo-Zulu War conference, University of Natal, Durban, February 7, 1979. 51. Buthelezi refers here to T. R. H. Davenport, South Africa-A Modern History (London: Macmillan, 1977) and claims that the author incorrectly analyzes current black political trends, but it is not clear what misconceptions Davenport is accused of propagating. 52. M.G. Buthelezi, "The Bias of Historical Analysis."

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53. M.G. Buthelezi, speech on Shaka Day, Stanger, 1979. 54. M.G. Buthelezi, speech on Shaka Day, Stanger, September 25, 1982. 55. M.G. Buthelezi, speech on Shaka Day, Stanger, September 24, 1974. 56. The ceremony on Shaka Day was held for the first time in 1954 by King Cyprian Bhekuzulu. It was a three-day ceremony attended by thousands of people. Chief Buthelezi claimed to be at least partly responsible for its success. See Temkin, Gatsha Buthelezi, pp. 48--49. 57. M.G. Buthelezi, speech on Shaka Day, Stanger, 1974. 58. J. K. Ngubane, "Shaka's Social, Political and Military Ideas," in D. Burness, ed., Shaka King of the Zulus in African Literature (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1976). 59. 0. Dhlomo, speech on Shaka Day, Stanger, 1978. 60. Maphalala, "The Black Man's Interpretation of South African History." 61. Buthelezi has managed to convince many people. For example, in the introduction to his book Emperor Shaka the Great-A Zulu Epic (London: Heinemann, 1979), Mazisi Kunene, a Zulu poet and ANC member, praises Buthelezi, saying: "His glorious example of leadership is a true continuation of the tradition of his ancestor, Shaka the Great himself. Through such visions as he possesses, the actions of the forefathers became a living reality." 62. Ngubane, "Shaka's Social, Political and Military Ideas." 63. UBuntu Botho, Book 2, Unit 2. 64. UBuntu Botho, Book 1, Unit 2. 65. UBuntu Botho syllabus, p. 6 (original emphasis). 66. Students' Organizations Conference, Durban, July 20-24, 1984. 67. Student protestors at the University of Zululand in 1980 and 1983 attacked the Inkatha syllabus. Also, interviews with history teachers in Lamontville and Pietermaritzburg, September 1984. 68. UBuntu Botho, Book 1, Unit 2. 69. Ibid., chap. I. 70. Ibid., chap. 3. 71. Ibid., chap. 4. 72. Ibid. 73. Although the textbooks stress the importance of oral traditions and the fact that history can be recorded orally, the books treat oral evidence as a monolithic and authoritative source. No discussion is devoted to the changing nature of oral traditions or to different existing versions of tales, just as the books never mention the subjectivity of historical writing or the possibility of further investigation of historical materials. The authoritative tone of the books is equally evident in the questions the students are asked, to which there is only one answer, and in the regular use of the collective imperative, "we must." "We must emphasize our oneness in Africa, not allowing ourselves to be divided or kept apart"; or "We must know the separate divisions that were there previously, and the importance of rulers like Shaka in uniting them into a single Nation." 74. UBuntu Botho, Book 1, Unit 2, chap. 2. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid., chap. 1. 77. Ibid., chap. 3.

2 THE COLONIZATION OF THE ZULU PAST

FIRST EUROPEAN IMPRESSIONS OF THE ZULU KINGDOM

The earliest works on the Zulu were written mainly by travelers and traders whose journeys took them away from the settlers' community of the Cape to unknown Zululand. These works are characterized by their emphasis on "the other," or what was different and strange in Zulu customs, and they usually take the form of a diary. The writers portray themselves as discovering unknown lands and call for the colonization of Natal. Thus, economic motives underlie the way they describe the Zulu. Zululand not only bore the halo of the unknown as a dark and romantic country but was also well worth conquering. Among these authors were F. G. Farewell, a former naval lieutenant, and traders J. S. King, Henry Francis Fynn, and Nathaniel Isaacs. These men soon realized the full potential of commerce with the Zulu kingdom and aimed to make Port Natal a permanent station for trade with the Zulu kingdom.! The traders were well received by Shaka at his capital in 1824 and, according to Farewell, were offered "possession in perpetuity to themselves, heirs, and executors, of the Port or Harbour of Natal, known by the native name 'Bubolongo', together with the Islands therein, and surrounding country."2 Farewell's description of Shaka was the original comparison between the Zulu king and Attila. Indeed, his opening sentence appeared again and again in later works: "Chaka is one of the most monstrous characters that ever existed; Attila himself was hardly his fellow."3 Farewell went on to depict Shaka as a tyrant who believed that he was the most powerful person in the world and a leader whose subjects feared his caprices. King opened his account of Shaka with the words: "History, perhaps, does not furnish an instance of a more despotic and cruel monster than Chaka."4 The author of the most widely read book of the travel genre was the trader Nathaniel Isaacs.s Isaacs was seventeen years old when he was engaged by King as supercargo in 1825. After King's death, Isaacs went into partnership with Henry Francis Fynn, and the two traded with the Zulu until 1831, when

35

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INVENTING SHAKA

Isaacs left for England. Later Isaacs returned to St. Helena in an attempt to convince the colonial government to annex Natal. The same cause brought him back to London in 1833. Isaacs's book, published in 1836, formed an important part of his colonial campaign, and in it his commercial motives are explicit. The book aimed at publicizing the interests of merchants and traders and at convincing the British government Natal had rich potential as a colony. Describing the fertility of the area in detail, Isaacs preached its promise as an agricultural colony. However, he attempted to cover up his propaganda motives by assuring his readers from time to time that his sole reason for writing the book was the "want of information" on the region and that "however uninteresting the details seem to be, they are the truth, and nothing but the truth."6 What Isaacs meant by "nothing but the truth" became clear in a letter he wrote to Fynn, who was also engaged in writing a book about his experiences in Zululand: "Make them out as blood thirsty as you can ... and describe the frivolous crime people loose [sic] their lives for, introduce as many anecdotes relative to Chaka as you can, it all tends to swell up the work and make it interesting."? Isaacs's book was written as the diary narrative of a boy's adventures in a strange and dangerous land.s The first volume is devoted to Shaka and the second to Dingane, and Isaacs paints complementary and reversed images of the two kings. Shaka is depicted as a tyrant, "an insatiable and exterminating savage,"9 but Dingane "may doubtless become, in no great distance of time, so far advanced in civilisation, as to make his country a favourable spot for colonising."IO Isaacs portrayed Dingane as an advanced ruler in order to validate the possibility of commercial relations with him, and to heighten the contrast, he depicted Shaka as no less than a monster. Isaacs echoes Farewell's and King's conclusions: "The world has heard of monsters-Rome had her Nero, the Huns their Attila, and Syracuse her Dionysius; the East has likewise produced her tyrants; but for ferocity, Chaka has exceeded them all."!! Because Isaacs was closely associated with both King and Farewell, and all had spent months in the interior trading with the Zulu, they shared their impressions, and the image of Shaka that they created influenced generations of writers and readers. Moreover, because Isaacs was regarded as an authority on the Zulu and his book was the only firsthand account of Shaka published at the time, his work came to be cited as an authoritative source by anthropologists, historians, and government administrators.\2 As recently as 1979, D. Colvin praised the book, saying it was "as fascinating as Robinson Crusoe."l3 A drawing of Shaka that Isaacs included in his book has reappeared in all the major works on Zulu history and has become the "official" portrait of the king. It is indicative of Isaacs's ulterior motives that the king who was famous for arming his soldiers with short stabbing spears is drawn carrying a very long spear in this famous sketch. But commercial motives do

COLONIZATIONOFZULUPAST

Isaacs, Nathaniel. Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa (London: Edward Churton, 1836).

"Chaka, King of the Zoolus," J. Saunders King

37

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not account for everything that Isaacs wrote. His description of Shaka, meant to contrast with that of Shaka's "noble" and "progressive" brother Dingane, is a vivid and vigorous one. Apparently, Isaacs took his own advice to Fynn and kept in mind the expectations of his readers, and he certainly did provide his readers with what they wanted and expected to read. Not only did his narrative conform with earlier descriptions, but he made certain that his readers received as much colorful detail as was expected from adventure books.14 In 1836, the same year that the two volumes of Isaacs's Travels appeared, A. F. Gardiner's Narrative of a Journey to the Zoolu Country was also printed. Gardiner was a former naval officer who had become a missionary, and his Narrative, also in diary form, described the author's experiences in Zululand in 1835. Gardiner seconded Isaacs's appeal for British representation in Port Natal. His goals were to regulate trade in the area and to ensure that the European trade treaty he had negotiated with Dingane was observed. In May 1835, he had obtained Dingane's permission to open a trade station in Zululand in return for his mediation between Zulu authorities and Port Natal traders. A few months after receiving this permission, Gardiner traveled to London, where he immediately published his book. In addition to its call on the British government to exercise control over traders and to regulate their relationship with the Zulu, the Narrative was a plea for missionaries to join the author in his attempt to convert the Zulu to Christianity. In contrast to Isaacs, Gardiner depicted Dingane as an oppressor and a tyrant and claimed that only Christianity could free the Zulu ruler's oppressed subjects from his barbaric despotism. Although he was not later cited as often as Isaacs, his book offered the only firsthand account of Zululand in 1835 and was one of few firsthand descriptions of Dingane. The change in Dingane's image from the advanced leader of Isaacs's narrative to his portrayal as a tyrant by Gardiner was the first step in the process through which his name increasingly became associated with terror and fear. The 1838 incident that later become the centerpiece of European representations of the Zulu received almost no attention in the literature of the 1830s and 1840s, when the main concern of whites in the area was still to encourage the British to colonize Natal. In November 1837, Piet Retief, the leader of a trekker group, led a party of horsemen to Dingane's capital to seek the king's approval for a settlement in the region south of the Tugela River. Following the visit, Retief wrote that "the king behaved to me with great kindness during all the time I was with him." 15 But a later visit in February 1838 ended in the killing of Retief and seventy trekkers who accompanied him. Later, when colonization was a fact rather than a dream, the Retief massacre became a major symbol of Afrikaner nationalism.

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39

According to most early-twentieth-century Afrikaner versions of the story, Dingane had consented to grant the trekkers a tract of land on the condition that they prove their goodwill by recovering some of his cattle, which he said had been stolen in raids by Africans living on the plateau across the mountains. Retief did as requested, returning with the cattle on a second visit. After a three-day stay in the Zulu capital, the Afrikaners were invited to drink beer and enjoy dances. Then, when they least expected it, they were surrounded by Dingane's men and killed.J6 G. S. Preller's book Piet Relief, published in 1906, was largely responsible for drawing the attention of Afrikaner historians to the Great Trek and making Retief, leader of the trek, a symbol of Afrikaner heroism. By the late 1930s and early 1940s, the Great Trek, the Retief massacre, and the battle of Blood River had become central focus points of interest in Afrikaner writing. There was an upsurge of Afrikaner nationalism at the time, of which the most dramatic event was the symbolic Ox-Wagon Trek of 1938, commemorating the centenary of the Great Trek. The symbolic trek ended with a ceremony attended by more than one hundred thousand Afrikaners (perhaps one-tenth of the total Afrikaner population) during which the foundation stone for the Voortrekkers Monument was laid.l7 A renewed interest in the encounter between Retief and Dingane arose in 1957 when a treaty was found that was believed to be the original one signed by Dingane. It turned out to be a facsimile, but not before some historians were describing the find as the "most important event in the last twenty years."l8 The image of Dingane as a tyrant and a cheat who betrayed the Boers has dominated twentieth-century Afrikaner writing. However, it has been contradicted by some liberal white and nationalist Zulu writers, who attempt to explain Dingane's motive for the killings. Some versions argue that the trekkers were planning to attack their hosts and had been wandering around at night in an attempt to surround the town. Others state that Retief and his group had behaved strangely or contrary to Zulu customs and were therefore seen as wizards. This version explains the famous cry"Kill the wizards!"-that the Zulu king allegedly uttered to start the killings. Recent writings explain that Dingane killed his visitors because he and his counselors realized that the Boers posed a threat to their vital interests. Whereas Gardiner's image of Dingane as a tyrant was already established in the middle of the nineteenth century, by the twentieth century Dingane became also untrustworthy and evil. While he was alive it was in the interest of writers to portray him as an intelligent, if barbaric kingwho was in any case a more promising potential ally than his brother Shaka had been. Francis Owen's diary,l9 which was said to provide a firsthand account of Dingane's encounter with the trekkers, was not published until

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1926, when Afrikaner nationalism was at its height. It was mainly after the South African war of 1899-1902 that the story of Dingane and Retief became a focus of Afrikaner literature and was utilized by colonists as proof of the evil character of their black neighbors.

THE COLONIZATION OF NATAL AND THE "CONQUEST" OF ZULU HISTORY

With the collaboration of the Boers, Dingane's brother Mpande replaced Dingane as king in 1840. Mpande was successful in maintaining stability and peace in the area, but, his deeds being less dramatic, he could not be described in the same colorful and exaggerated language that had been used to portray his brothers before him. With Mpande's rule and the annexation of Natal as a British colony in 1845, Zululand lost some of its romantic aura as the unknown, the other, the dangerous and barbaric yet fascinating place. The second half of the nineteenth century was characterized by competition and tension between European settlers and African farmers. Between 1849 and 1851, with the arrival of some five thousand new immigrants from Britain, the white population of Natal almost doubled. Food for the newcomers, who settled mostly in towns, was largely supplied by African farmers. Natal was a poor colony. Its geographic isolation from commercial centers and markets and-with the important exception of ivory-its lack of raw materials or conditions suitable for the production of a profitable staple export commodity discouraged investment and immigration.20 Trade and commerce were the most significant aspects of the colonial economy, with Natal serving as a point of import and export from the interior of Africa. Natal's best agricultural land was acquired by large speculating companies in London or the Cape, effectively removing it from the settlerfarming community. The African natives, who still had access to land, were reluctant to work for the wages the settlers offered. On top of all that, the costly and inefficient transport of goods and produce caused further difficulties for the white farmers.21 The shortage of land and labor and the difficulties in competing with the more efficient African producers occasioned much anger within the settler community, and the settlers therefore pressured the colonial administration to help them in two areas: (1) applying economic pressures to the African farmers in Natal and (2) destroying the neighboring Zulu kingdom, thus forcing its inhabitants to work for them. The expansionist tendencies represented by the annexation of Natal eventually led to the destruction of the Zulu kingdom, partly as a response to the settlers' demands and partly because of British imperialist actions

COLONIZATION OF ZULU PAST

TRANSVAAL

COLONY

ORANH RIVER

COLONY

EAST

PONDOLAND aMilu

'------"----"--~

Daphna Golan

Natal and Zululand, 1900s

41

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INVENTING SHAKA

after the discovery of minerals. The settlers argued for years that the colonization of Zululand would put an end to their problems. Situated between the Transvaal and St. Lucia and sharing a border with Natal that ran for some one hundred miles along the Tugela and Mzinyathi rivers, the fertile, well-watered Zulu kingdom was ideal for cattle raising and largely free of debilitating tropical diseases.22 Theophilus Shepstone, the long-time British colonial secretary for native affairs in Natal, was the man who carried out the colonial policy designed to solve the land and labor problems and is said to have personally influenced it. His policy of traditionalism aimed, first of all, to enable the British to rule the colony in an efficient and inexpensive way and to keep it as stable as possible. He also tried to respond to the demands of white settlers for cheap labor, even though he was repeatedly criticized for not doing enough on this issue. Claiming that it was unjust and cruel to bring Africans under RomanDutch law, Shepstone advocated the establishment of a system of "customary law" for Africans. Under this law, chiefs were expected to maintain law and order within "tribal" units. The British appointed commoners to the office of chief where trustworthy hereditary chiefs could not be found. In this way Natal was governed at minimal expense, and the tribal distinctions were used for a policy of divide and conquer.23 To carry out this policy, which would later be developed into one of "separate development," 2.25 million acres, about one-sixth of Natal's land, were set aside for purely African occupation between 1846 and 1864. On these reserve lands Africans were as far as possible grouped together under their recognized chiefs and governed according to so-called customary law.24 The establishment of the reserves was intended to restrict the natives to specific areas, "keeping them, if possible, a little way removed from the contaminating influence of the chief town and the port."25 The establishment of the reserves was meant, among other things, to help the white settlers. The taxation system was also designed with the interest of the settlers in mind: Aside from raising revenue, it was meant to accelerate social change and to drive Africans onto the labor market. But the colonists demanded reductions in the size of the reserves to render them insufficient to meet the subsistence needs of the inhabitants, thereby forcing them to work for the white farmers.26 And the settlers also kept up pressure to destroy the neighboring Zulu kingdom to ensure themselves more cheap labor.27 Shepstone's system of traditionalism was sharply criticized by the colonists, who objected to his tolerance of African traditions. The settlers argued that the traditional system enabled Africans to lead an idle life in which they had no need to work for white farmers. In the 1850s and 1860s, the colonists advocated cultural assimilation, calling for whites and Africans to be interspersed with one another, but this notion did not imply

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civic equality for Africans. "They did not really mean assimilation in the sense of eliminating cultural differences between white and black, rather they wished to entrench a new difference; that between a class of masters and a class of servile labourers."28 Missionaries objected to the Shepstonian system for different reasons. They believed they were failing to convert Africans to Christianity because the tribal system encapsulated the Africans in a pagan environment. Polygamy, for instance, was identified both by colonists and by missionaries as one of the worst of the primitive evils afflicting the African community. It was decried by the colonists as a key factor in maintaining the efficiency of the African homestead and thereby shielding blacks from the farmers' need for cheap labor; the missionaries saw it as a major obstacle to religious conversion. Colonization was accompanied by the "conquest" of Zulu history and culture. The period of personal accounts was now over, and the early-nineteenth-century travel books and diaries were replaced by "studies" of the Zulu. With the change in form came some major changes in the image of the Zulu. The literature was organized within the academic disciplines of history, ethnography, folklore, and comparative religion. The Europeans interested in Zulu culture, religion, and history were administrators and missionaries who spoke the Zulu language and had been collecting oral traditions for years. The volume of publications increased dramatically, with the life stories of Zulu kings remaining a chief point of reference. A literary convention was developed in which personal biography was interjected into otherwise "objective" descriptions of historical events. Later, twentiethcentury writings followed the same pattern.29 In what follows I do not discuss all these writings, just those that had a strong impact on future literature, that is, works by Shepstone, whose native policy shaped relationships between colonizers and colonized not only in Natal and Zululand but in South Africa as a whole; the missionaries-mainly Holden and Callawaywho wrote about the religious beliefs of the Zulu; and Bishop Colenso, who Disraeli claimed was converted by the Zulu.

Shepstone the Historian Knowledge means rising above immediacy, beyond self, into the foreign and distant. The object of such knowledge is inherently vulnerable to scrutiny; the object is a "fact" which, if it develops, changes, or otherwise transforms itself in the way that civilizations frequently do, nevertheless is fundamentally, even ontologically stable. To have a knowledge of such a thing is to dominate it, to have authority over it. And authority here means for "us" to deny autonomy to "it"-the Oriental country-since we know it and it exists, in a sense, as we know it. -Edward Said, Orienta/ism

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Theophilus Shepstone was not only a very effective policymaker; he was also an influential author of studies of Zulu history and society.JO By collecting oral evidence from Africans, he was able to contradict the Natal colonists' belief-or claim-that in the 1830s and 1840s the territory had contained very few Africans who could legitimately claim to be aboriginal inhabitants of Natal and that most of the Africans in the region were refugees from the wars of mfecane. Shepstone produced evidence that both Natal and Zululand were "thickly inhabited by numerous Native tribes closely located together" at the end of the eighteenth century.31 In 1867, he delivered a lecture titled "The Early History of the Zulu Kafir Race of South Eastern Africa," in which he attributed a leading role to Shaka's mentor, Godongwana, who was later called Dingiswayo.32 According to Shepstone, Dingiswayo initiated a new phase in the history of the natives, bringing new ideas from the Cape, where he had worked while in exile after having fled his father's wrath. Shepstone argued that, for example, it was Dingiswayo who began organizing the army in regiments and that Shaka inherited this system from him. Henry Francis Fynn had written an earlier and different version of the life story of Dingiswayo, but Shepstone's account was the first to become well known.33 His story of the rise of the Mthethwa kingdom under Dingiswayo begins with escape and exile. Friends of Mawewe (Dingiswayo's brother) circulated a rumor that Dingiswayo intended to assassinate Chief uJobe, the father of both. The chief believed the rumor and ordered his followers to kill Dingiswayo and his adherents. Dingiswayo was severely wounded, but he fled from country to country, pursued by his father. After repeated escapes, Dingiswayo arrived at a settlement of a tribe led by Chief Bungane, where he was taken into the service of the chief and assured of protection. He excelled as a warrior and is said to have single-handedly killed a lioness.34 According to Shepstone, Dingiswayo did not remain in exile in the area ruled by Chief Bungane but went all the way to the Cape, where he worked for a white man. Impressed by the Zulu regimental system (the amabuthu), Shepstone concluded that "its origin must have been in the European military system," explaining that "it was during his [Dingiswayo's] stay in the Cape Colony that he acquired the information, or made the observations, which were to effect the great change in his native land and the surrounding countries" and that if these changes had not taken place, "Natal could scarcely have become a British colony."35 Shepstone's account stressed the importance of European knowledge in the formation of the Zulu kingdom. He went on to divide Zulu history into three phases: in the first "we have simple, primitive, unalloyed barbarism, unmitigated as well as untainted by any trace of civilization"; in the second "we have the same barbarism," but "we have also added to these a

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dash of civilization"; and in the last, the Zulu came into a closer contact with the superior European culture, which was the more developed. The second phase was initiated when Dingiswayo introduced the new knowledge he had acquired at the Cape. In Shepstone's influential view, it was contact with whites that transformed Zulu savagery into its second and eventually its third phase.36 By shifting the focus of attention from Shaka to Dingiswayo, Shepstone decreased Shaka's historical importance as the founder of the Zulu kingdom. His deemphasis of Shaka may be connected with his concern with the establishment of Mthethwa political hegemony and his fight to break the political dominance of Shaka's heirs, the royal family of Zululand.37 In his comparison of the two leaders, Dingiswayo is portrayed as "a humane and progressive ruler," and Shaka is once more labeled as bloodthirsty and cruel. Shepstone also promoted the idea that, before Dingiswayo' s contact with whites, the Zulu were "unwarlike and harmless, and lived in happiness and contentment with each other."38 He also stated that before Shaka came to power, wars were no more than minor disputes that "seldom lasted longer than a few days" and never "caused the destruction of a tribe."39 Although Dingiswayo introduced new systems of war, he never destroyed his neighbors, but Shaka and the kings who followed him caused bloodshed and exploited their "obedient subjects." Shepstone viewed the Zulu kings Shaka, Dingane, and Cetshwayo as "an absolute hindrance in the way of civilization" and regarded their political organizations as ones in which "public opinion or tribal councils have very little to say."40 In other words, Shepstone wrote as if the half-century of centralization had never happened, for in his view there was "no Zulu nation, but only autonomous tribes yearning for their ancient separate existence."41 The paradox in Shepstone's conception of Zulu history was that, although he attempted to dismiss sixty years of rule by Zulu kings, he nonetheless claimed to continue their tradition of government: that is, he justified allocating political authority over the natives in Natal to the British governor on the basis that the Zulu kings allegedly held the power of life and death over their subjects.42 Thus the relationship between Shepstone's colonial policy and his studies of the Zulu past is remarkably close. He further justified his policy by arguing that it maintained peace, allowed for controlled change of the African way of life, and fostered the gradual introduction of "industrial habits." However, some features of the Shakan system of divide and conquer were continued by Shepstone. He appointed new chiefs and divided and amalgamated tribes according to his convenience.43 Through his links with traditional chiefs, he attempted to decrease the power of the Zulu royal family and to build opposition to it among government-appointed chiefs. His opposition to the domination of the Zulu royal family was reflected in

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his studies of Zulu history, in which he stressed the family's role in disturbing the law and order that he believed had characterized the area before the rise of the Zulu empire. Shepstone's policy and his view of Zulu history later led him to advocate a war to eliminate the power of the royal family that he opposed so strongly. During the nineteenth century, Shepstone's theses were not disputed. He was cited by H. Brooks and F. B. Fynney, among others.44 J. Y. Gibson, the first British magistrate in northern Zululand, who collected oral histories in Natal in the 1880s, published The Story of the Zulus in 1903. In it, he accepted Shepstone's "Cape theory" of Dingiswayo's wandering as fact, although it is clear that he was familiar with Fynn's writings.45 Gibson's book was used as a textbook on Zulu history in mission schools. At Adams College, for example, Albert Luthuli used it to teach young Zulu their history. Even some Zulu writers who studied Gibson's texts, for example the Dhlomo brothers, later wrote novels and plays on the Zulu past in which the Shepstonian theory was not questioned. Later textbooks continued to rely on Shepstone's theory, emphasizing the knowledge Dingiswayo allegedly gained from the whites and his importance to the early history of the Zulu kingdom.

The Missionaries The works of missionaries published between 1850 and 1880 are characterized by a need to know "the minds and modes of thought" of the "savages," together with a belief in the possibility and importance of converting and civilizing Africans. In the books of this period, the Zulu are depicted as barbarous and subject to the tyranny of their kings, a people that could be saved only by conversion to Christianity. However, this missionary literature also reflects the ongoing debate over native policy, or-in terms that were not used but are appropriate-labor and religious policy. Rev. W. C. Holden took part in this wider discussion of colonial native policy with his account of Nguni history and society. Holden had spent twenty-six years as a minister in Natal prior to the book's publication and claimed to have collected much oral evidence from "some of the oldest and most intelligent natives," among them Shaka's uncle (Nandi's brother).46 Shaka was Holden's focus of interest, and he claimed that "to the Zulu his name is sacred, and never used except to give solemnity to an oath, or to nerve the warrior for battle."47 In addition, Holden called Shaka "the Bonaparte of South Africa" and depicted him as a great leader, even more so than Alexander the Great. However, Holden goes on to explain, "in the accomplishment of his [Shaka's] ambitious projects, all means were alike lawful. Suffering, tears, blood, and death, had no voice to pierce his steeled heart, or arrest his angry stroke."48 According to Holden, "This mighty

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executor of the human race not only spread terror abroad by success of his arms, but was feared at home, on account of the number who fell victims to his suspicion, or revenge, or caprice."49 Holden called Shaka a "monster chief," maintaining that he was called "the Hyaena Man ... as being descriptive of the revolting scowl and dark treachery of that ferocious beast."50 Holden's assumptions, hopes, and beliefs were shared by most missionaries and are reflected in their writings. His authority in historical writing was equaled by that of Rev. Henry Callaway in folklore. Callaway wrote mainly for students of the Zulu language and comparative folklore. His two best-known books were Nursery Tales and The Religious System of the Amazulu.st Like other missionaries writing at the time, Callaway combined his interest in Zulu nursery tales and the Zulu religion with the need to gain public support for his missionary activities. Through his publications he hoped to interest people in England in the importance of missionary work in Zululand. However, according to Russell Martin, Callaway never sold even four hundred copies of either of his books and had to rely on an annual subvention from the Natal government to cover the costs of printing his collection of folklore and religious traditions.s2 Nonetheless, Callaway's works were influential and were cited by anthropologists writing on the Zulu as well as by scholars of Zulu literature. The fact that the colonial government supported their publication indicates that both administrators and missionaries assumed that it was important to understand the natives' mode of thought. Callaway's publication of the nursery tales was based on the assumption, shared by other folklorists at the time, that there are stages in the development of the human species, and that there are similarities in the motives and beliefs of different peoples at the same stage. "Regarded from such point of view," he explains, "these simple children's tales are the history of a people's mind in one phase of its existence."53 As a result of collecting these tales, Callaway reached a further conclusion suited to his belief in the possibility of and the necessity for the religious conversion of the Zulu: He "realized" that "the Zulus are a degenerated people; that they are not now in the condition intellectually or physically in which they were during 'the legend producing period' of their existence; but have sunk from a higher state."54 Thus, Callaway was convinced, and wanted to convince his readers, that "in dealing with these people ... we are dealing with savage men, who only need culture to have developed in them the finest traits of our human nature."55 A common feature of all missionary writing before Bishop Colenso's was the objection to polygamy. It was viewed as the main obstacle to conversion, and the missionaries' opposition to polygamy naturally affected their writings. Rev. L. Grout invented a set of circumstances preceding

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Shaka's birth to make the story support his views. Contrary to most versions, he claimed that, "Usenzangacona was rich in wives and children; having twenty-five or thirty of the former, and no one knows how many of the latter. Between him and one of his wives, Umnandi (the sweet one), the mother of Chaka, there arose some cause of bitterness, which is common, actually inevitable, in a social state for which polygamy is the basis."56 The origin of the Zulu was another subject that was widely debated in missionary writings. The idea that the Zulu were of Arabic origin, which was first published in early ethnographic works, was meant to explain both the distinctive physical features of the Zulu and their unique history of empire formation.57 Writers such as Holden and Grout, who shared an orthodox religious commitment, sought the origins of the Zulu within their framework of the orthodox doctrine of monogenesis. Origin, as we will see later, was another subject for never-ending enquiries; and the tendency in the early nineteenth century was to show that all peoples had one common origin, in accordance with biblical theory. Holden argued, for example, that the Nguni dispersion into Africa probably occurred at "the time of Babel" when God added racial to linguistic divisions among mankind. 58 A Different Missionary: Bishop Colenso and the Zulu Past

Bishop J. W. Colenso was a controversial figure who was ostracized by the colonial and missionary communities for more than a decade. The longer he stayed in Natal, the more critical he became of colonial policy and missionary work; and his views, as expressed in his speeches and books, did not usually reflect those common in contemporary Natal. Colenso arrived in Natal in 1855 as the head of the Church of England mission to the African population and bishop to the colony's settlers. His residence, Bishopstowe, and the adjoining mission station were situated outside Pietermaritzburg, a few hours' ride from the cathedral. His The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshuah Critically Examined,59 published in 1862, caused an intense public debate by questioning the historical accuracy of the Old Testament. The book was controversial partly because in it, Colenso explained that his doubts concerning the literal truth of the Bible were reawakened after his Zulu assistant, William Ngidi, questioned the historical accuracy of the story of the Flood. Colenso's thinking expressed in The Pentateuch was unacceptable to Anglican theologians. He was attacked as a ludicrous figure-a bishop sent to convert the heathen who was instead converted by them. As such, he was criticized harshly, and his brother bishops worked hard to silence him. The bishop of Cape Town found him guilty of erroneous teaching and deposed and eventually excommunicated him.60 While debating his thinking with church theologians, Colenso also had

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to face much opposition from Natal's settlers. He was initially a close friend of the secretary for native affairs and was later convinced that Shepstone's traditionalist policy enabled the gradual advancement of Africans toward civilization. As we have seen, this notion was not very popular among the settlers, who saw the policy as a cause of the shortage of cheap labor. Along with his support of Shepstone, Colenso was also one of few missionaries who tolerated polygamy, and this was another subject of bitter debate between him and his settler and missionary opponents. The colonists argued that the practice of polygamy allowed married men to live idly at home while their wives worked for them, thereby denying male labor to the settlers and holding back the economic progress of the colony.6 1 Colenso's isolation grew even more after 1873, when he publicly spoke out against the injustice of the colonial actions against Africans. He actively supported Langalibalele, the Hlubi chief, and later the Zulu king Cetshwayo, both of whom were accused of being enemies of the colonial government. Langalibalele, chief of a community of Hlubi, had fled with his people to Natal in fear of an attack by the Zulu king Mpande. After living for some time near the Zululand border, the refugees moved to a location of about ninety thousand acres in the foothills of the Drakensberg Mountains, where they prospered. The success of the Hlubi farmers was seen as a threat by their white neighbors. 62 In 1872, a government order was circulated informing magistrates that Africans were required to register all firearms in their possession. Langalibalele attempted to obey the order, but he was unable to enforce it. After some warnings, white soldiers and volunteers launched a punitive expedition in which they devastated the Hlubi community. Women, children, and old people were killed, thousands were marched to Pietermaritzburg for relocation, and Langalibalele was put on trial. Attending the trial, Colenso became aware of some of the injustices of the legal as well as the colonial system. As he attempted to support Langalibalele, his long friendship with Shepstone crumbled, along with his confidence in Shepstone's policy. From 1879 on, the bishop protested what he regarded as the unjust war launched against the Zulu. He viewed it as his duty to help Cetshwayo, the exiled Zulu king, and concentrated on exposing the wrongs done to the Zulu and their king until his death in 1883. Today Colenso is remembered mainly for his controversial ideas about colonial policy and mission work. But, among Zulu students, it was the eighteen textbooks he wrote that left the most significant mark. For example, his Zulu-English Dictionary, an important tool for scholars as well as missionaries who worked among the Zulu, was still in print in 1940, and his /zindaba, a historical account of the Zulu past, was the first book written in the Zulu language to be used as a textbook in schools.63 /zindaba

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summarizes the "common knowledge" about Zulu history, relying on Fynn's, Isaacs's, and probably Shepstone's ideas. Colenso's work initiated the tradition of Europeans writing textbooks for Africans about Africans, a tradition that continues today in South Africa. Callaway's folklore text was written in this tradition, and in the 1920s James Stuart wrote five readers that have been used by generations of African schoolchildren. Later, after the Bantu Education Act of 1953, books in Afrikaans and English were translated for the use of African students. The idea of recording the history of the Zulu for their own benefit was first suggested by amateur historians such as A. T. Bryant and J. Y. Gibson, and the extensive use of their works in schools has had a tremendous effect on the Zulu intelligentsia. Colenso was first to express the view that the missionaries would be able to draw the Zulu to the schools by teaching them about their own past and customs. He wrote that it was essential for Zulu students to gain "some information, as they read, about the state of things around them. "64 However, these textbooks on Zulu history written by Europeans meant that the Zulu learned their history as it was understood by whites. Not only was the content selectively presented by these white writers, but the form, the assumptions, and the interpretations were also determined by those outside the culture. Most of these works were allegedly intended "for the benefit of the future generations of the natives." Paradoxically, this settler-missionary version of Zulu history, which was influential throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was constructed with the help of the Zulu royal family. For, although the colonizers determined the chronology of the historiography as well as its main themes and moral judgments, members of the Zulu royalty were the main source of information for white writers, and it is their stories, with their interpretation, that the white authors wrote, adapted, distorted, or reinterpreted. Thus, written Zulu history, although created and maintained almost exclusively by whites, also served the goals and interests of the Zulu royalty.

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ZULU KINGDOM AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE ZULU AS "SAVAGE WARRIORS"

In 1879, the British army invaded Zululand on a mission to end Zulu independence and put an end to the Zulu empire, which was then ruled by Mpande's son Cetshwayo.65 Although the Natal colonists had long viewed the Zulu kingdom as an obstacle to their expansionist tendencies and the cause of their labor shortage, the British Colonial Office only approved the termination of Zulu independence when the plan coincided with its own wider interests in the region. The confederation plan developed by the

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Colonial Office after the discovery of minerals in the area could not be realized as long as the Zulu kingdom still existed. Therefore, in addition to facilitating the settlers' desire for more land, the destruction of the Zulu empire was also a means of forcing the Zulu to migrate to the colonial towns to work in the mines, and the new industry was developed around their labor. The Zulu defeated the British army at Isandlwana, but after a later battle at Ulundi the colonial army claimed a military victory. In fact, the Zulu ceased fighting after the British promised them that they would retain possession of their lands-a promise that was not kept. 66 Then, in accordance with the long-established tradition of divide and conquer, the British divided the Zulu kingdom into thirteen chiefdoms, certain that the wars among the nominated chiefs would bring an end to Zulu independence and encourage the migration of Zulu laborers into neighboring Natal. The war, the killing of the French prince imperial, and the victory at Isandlwana brought the Zulu to public attention in Europe. Disraeli's famous comment-"a remarkable people the Zulu. They convert our bishops, defeat our generals and put an end to a great European dynasty"echoed this new awareness. Once the kingdom was no more and the Zulu had been forcibly transformed into migrant labor, the domestication of the Zulu was completed on other levels. Having become a part of white households as cheap labor, they now emerged as the object of white curiosity. The fiction of the time reflected the fear of the Zulu still felt by the colonists in Natal, but it also contained a new strain of paternalism and a new interest in romanticizing the Zulu past now that their empire was destroyed and their king exiled. Once the Zulu began to be assimilated into the white way of life, their culture and heritage became a focus of interest.

Rider Haggard The novelist Rider Haggard, whose treatment of the Zulu as noble savages and gallant warriors dominated popular fiction at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, contributed greatly to the popular image of the Zulu. His were the first romances to feature the Zulu, and this new genre mirrored changes in the white conception of the Zulu at the time. 67 Haggard wrote approximately seventy books, of which the best known are King Solomon's Mines and She. The Zulu were only one of his literary topics: Haggard also wrote about ancient Egypt and rural England,68 and was largely responsible for the early-twentieth-century notion that the ancient city of Zimbabwe was built by the Phoenicians,69 a view that reflected his idea that Africans were incapable of building such a town.

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In August 1875, when he was twenty-one, Haggard joined the staff of Sir Henry Bulwer, lieutenant-governor of Natal. Sixteen months later, he left Pietermaritzburg to join Sir Theophilus Shepstone on his mission to annex from the Boers the Transvaal. Returning to England in 1881 after an unsuccessful attempt to raise ostriches in Natal, Haggard maintained his fascination with the "savage" people of Africa. 70 The figure of the Englishman ruling effortlessly and successfully over a savage people recurs again and again in his works, evidence of his admiration for Shepstone. In his historical works, Haggard idealized Shepstone's methods of government, which he described as protecting the Zulu people from the rapacious greed of white settlers. Haggard believed that the "indirect rule" that Shepstone established in South Africa was the best form of government because it preserved the Africans' old way of life. His first book, Cetywayo and His White Neighbours7'-which did not sell well but was enthusiastically received by the colonial administration-described Zulu relations with the British from a Shepstonian point of view and depicts the Zulu king as ruling thanks to the goodwill of imperial Britain. Explaining why Cetshwayo should not have been restored to the throne, Haggard wrote that the king was "an offender against the Imperial Power in that he had not kept the promises which he solemnly entered into at the time of his coronation ... besides he was also a much deeper offender against his own people whom he had ruled with much cruelty."72 Haggard's books and poems in praise of Shepstone popularized colonial ideas and contributed to the legacy of British rule in South Africa. However, his admiration of Shepstone was based not only on the latter's policy but also on his knowledge of Zulu history. Indeed, Haggard regarded Shepstone, as well as the later administrator James Stuart, as authorities on the Zulu past, and he shared their notion that the Zulu past was more glorious than its present. Dedicating Cetywayo and His White Neighbours to Shepstone, Haggard wrote: "Sompseu [Somsteu], my father, I have written a book that tells of men and matters of which you know the most of any who still look upon the light."73 In his dedication of Child of Storm to James Stuart, Haggard revealed his disappointment with the current state of the Zulu people and his romantic notion that their past customs and way of life should be preserved. He explained that he had attempted to "write of the Zulu as a reigning nation, which now they ceased to be, and try to show them as they were, in all their superstitious madness and bloodstained grandeur. ... Now everything has changed ... it is of the former time that I have tried to write-the time of the Impis and the witch-finder and the rival princes of the royal house."74 More than thirty years after leaving South Africa, Haggard was still writing historical works, which, though they were not as successful as his bestselling novels, were nonetheless reprinted several times and were prob-

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ably the most widely read books about the Zulu past in Europe at the time. Two major literary devices evident in these late historical works had long been a staple of Haggard's fiction and would later become common in other writings about the Zulu. Nada the Lily, a historical romance relating the tragic love story of Umslopogaas and Nada, is supposedly told by Mopo, an old Zulu witch doctor who confesses to killing Shaka and his brother Dingane.75 Here Haggard suggests an alternative story of the lives of the brothers-he has Mopo claim responsibility for their assassinations. Explaining that both kings were killed because they harmed his loved ones, Mopo says: "I stabbed Chaka for the sake of my sister, Baleka, the mother of Umsolopogaas, and because he had murdered my wives and children. I and Umsolopogaas slew Dingaan for the sake of Nada, who was my daughter."76 The attempt to write through Zulu eyes and to present his story through a Zulu narrator was the first of Haggard's two major literary innovations. This genre of historical novels as told by a male Zulu narrator continued until the 1960s, when C. Cowley wrote in the voice of a Zulu queen.77 Haggard's second innovation was the introduction of fictional figures into historical events, changing the direction of historical events and suggesting new reasons for their occurrence. He reached the height of tampering with Zulu history in his trilogy about the Zulu past, which he wrote with James Stuart's assistance.78 The trilogy centers around three major events in Zulu history: the contest between the Voortrekkers and Dingane in 1838; the civil war between Mpande's sons Mbulazi and Cetshwayo in 1856; and the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. In all three, his fictional character, Allan Quatermain-already famous from previous novels-becomes the chief cause of major historical events. In Haggard's fictionalization, the real reason for the murder of Retief and his company by the Zulu is to kill the fictional white trader and hunter Quatermain, whom Haggard also involved in the rivalry between Mpande's sons. In Finished, Quatermain becomes caught up in the battle of Isandlwana after the witch doctor with whom he is staying attends a meeting called by Cetshwayo and leads the Zulu to decide in favor of going to war against the British. We should not expect from a novelist the same standards of accuracy we look for in a historian, but it is striking that Haggard not only gives an entirely false description of historical events and their causes but also reinforces the stereotype of Africans as irrational and superstitious. Even more, by allowing his white character to interfere in the Zulu past, and by ascribing fictional love affairs as major causes in the history of the Zulu, Haggard treats the Zulu past as his own creation, which could be changed to suit his own ideas of his readers' tastes. 79 This kind of manipulation is perhaps the crudest expression of the notion that the history of a colonized people can be distorted to serve the pleasure and interests of the colonizers. James

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Stuart apparently shared this view, which is especially disturbing because it influenced generations of South Africans and because Stuart's collection of oral traditions is one of the main sources for the study of the Zulu past. For Haggard, Zulu history amounted to little more than a tool to present two interwoven ideas. First, he used Africans to lay bare the core of the European man and to show that under a layer of civilization lies savagery. In this context, his narrator, Allan Quatermain, says: "I have always found the savage so interesting, for in him, nakedly and forcibly expressed, we see those eternal principles which direct our human destiny."80 The quest into unknown regions is thus a metaphor for journeys into the unknown regions of the self-the unconscious. Second, Haggard popularized Social Darwinism by expounding in fiction the argument that living "primitive" peoples exemplified the stages of human evolution through which Europeans had passed in previous centuries. Thus, journeys into unknown regions were also journeys into the European past, and Haggard presented the African world as one with no taboos, in which incest, polygamy, cannibalism, nudism, necrophilia, patricide, and homicide were everyday occurrences. Haggard's novels, read or otherwise experienced by millions (at least eleven of his books were made into films), helped perpetuate the image of Africans as a primitive people at a stage of human evolution behind that of Europeans. In his romances, he reinforced the justification of British indirect rule as well as the segregationist claims that because Africans are at a lower stage in the evolutionary chain, they should be governed according to their own customs and given time to develop.

MagemaFuze In 1922, about the same time that Haggard was popularizing Zulu history for European readers, the first book about the Zulu past in the Zulu language was written. This book, Abantu Abamnyama-Lapa Baveka Ngakona, by Magema Fuze, was privately published by the author in a limited edition.81 Fuze, who was born about 1840, was a Christian convert living at Bishopstowe (Bishop Colenso's mission station). He was close to the Zulu royal family and was summoned by the Zulu paramount Dinuzulu to be his secretary and tutor to his children during the family's exile on St. Helena. Fuze's book contains historical and anthropological information partly written by Fuze himself and partly taken from Colenso's /zindaba. Fuze explained that he wrote his book "in order that our children may get to know where they originally came from." Fuze answered the question, "Where did we come from?" on two different levels. Regarding the Bantu, he tells a story of their migration from the area of the Suez Canal. Then he addresses the question of the origins of

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human beings in general. In both cases, Fuze's discourse reflects Colenso's preoccupation with Darwinist theory and echoes the racist ideas common among white missionaries. Beginning in the 1830s, colonists had claimed that the Africans in Natal were refugees and not the aboriginal inhabitants of the area. The refugee theory later developed into the official view that South Africa was empty when white settlers first arrived. Social Darwinism, a very popular theory in North America and Europe in the late nineteenth century, was influential in South Africa and intensely debated in its newspapers around the tum of the century. Following Herbert Spencer, the theory's most important exponent, Social Darwinists assumed that the formula of natural selection could be applied to whole societies and that "primitive people represent the first stage in a ladder of development."82 Fuze argued against the theory that put black people on a level just above that of the orangutan. He was confused by the Biblical creation story and its inconsistency with Darwin's theory and attempted to twist the two so that they meshed with each other. Fuze formulated the following question: "Why should the story not be true that the first person to be created was a baboon, and that in the course of time the baboons developed into humans such as us? ... Would it be a miracle to suggest that white people evolved from these animals?"83 Fuze knew the history of black Americans and was familiar with a few liberated slaves in St. Helena. He seems to have been impressed by their stories because he included them in Abantu Abamnyama. Thus, one finds stories of the West Africa slave trade in his book. Fuze combined the idea of origins in the northeast with migration from West Africa to tell an unlikely story of the memories of "our predecessors," who were constantly on the move, from the Suez Canal region to South Africa, and who used to see slave boats arriving. 84 Moving beyond his preoccupation with origins, Fuze gave a detailed account of some Zulu customs and discussed the history of the Zulu kingdom. The inclusion of many chapters from Colenso's Izindabe suggests a general agreement between the two men. Although Fuze was an African, his views were very close to those of the missionary, with whom he lived and worked. His strongly Christian perspective on Zulu history is reflected most clearly in his frequent invocation of the influence of divine judgment as the causation of events. Written at the tum of the century, though published many years later, Fuze's work stands apart from the cultural and intellectual developments among the educated African elite of the time. Although he acknowledged the black newspaper Ilanga Lase Natal as an important development in African intellectual life, his ideological links with its editor, Dube, or with the educated elite who read it were very few. Fuze was much older than

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Dube and the other petty bourgeois leaders, who were soon to form the first Inkatha, and he did not take part in their political activities. His book did not reflect the new ideas of nationalism and separate development that were to become common later in the 1920s. Fuze began working on his book in the late 1880s, when the Christian community in Natal comprised fewer than ten thousand souls, considerably less than 10 percent of the black population. In Zululand, converts were numbered in the hundreds.ss The Christian community, composed mainly of refugees and the homeless, was despised by non-Christians. There were relatively few intermarriages between Christians and non-Christians, and black people did not want to send their children to school because they disapproved of the lifestyle on the mission stations and feared that their children would not obey them afterward. The kholwa (members of the Christian community) were also disliked by whites, who preferred "raw natives" because they presented little competition in education, for instance. Despite the kholwa's deep loyalty to the British government and their attempts to assimilate, the government never consented to their plea that they be exempted from tax payment and from the pass law. The enforcement of Native Act was therefore particularly problematic for the kholwa. In 1875 Magema Fuze organized a petition, eventually signed by dozens of kholwa, asking that Christians be exempted from Native Act. Although the petition did not specifically denounce lobola (the bride price) and polygamy, Fuze appended the names of all the kholwa who had signed a similar petition in which these practices were condemned. He also added the names of all men, living and dead, who had signed a similar petition twelve years earlier. While the petition received much publicity, it produced no results. Tom from traditional society and usually living in territories where they were foreigners, the kholwa adopted many European ways-although they did not depart altogether from traditional customs such as rainmaking, divining, and the manufacture of love potions. Polygamy was not abandoned, nor was the custom of lobola. Indeed, the most famous converts of Bishopstowe, William Ngidi and Fuze, both married second wives. According to Norman Etherington, "William Ngidi, who was widely believed to have inspired Bishop Colenso' s first doubts as to the literal truth of the Bible, left the bishop's station in 1867 to become Natal's most celebrated defender of traditional Nguni customs."86 Fuze's book responded to the needs of the isolated converts to find their roots in traditional society. Returning to their families was impossible, yet, cut off from the kinship system as they were, they had no traditional community. Thus, Fuze sought an alternative family-the Zulu nation-to which he felt he could belong. The "invention" of the history and customs

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of the Zulu nation was the way Fuze, and later other kholwa leaders, tried to create a social framework that was traditional yet still had a place for them. They wrote about the Zulu past and Zulu customs, borrowing terminology from the Western society into which they were trying in vain to assimilate. The non-Christian Zulu used the same word for converts and for Natal Africans, referring to both by the pejorative term kafule. Yet this community of converted Africans in Natal, of which Fuze was the first public representative, adopted Zulu nationalism as their ideology and embraced a Zulu identity and Zulu pride. Between the time Fuze's book was written and its publication in 1922, Zululand and Natal underwent radical changes. British forces invaded Zululand in 1879, and the Anglo-Zulu War and the civil war that lasted until1884 put an end to the independent existence of the kingdom. In 1897, Zululand was formally incorporated into Natal, and much of its land was opened to white settlement early in the twentieth century. The discovery of gold and diamonds changed the economy of South Africa, while the demand for cheap labor in the newly developed towns caused gradual but significant changes in the rest of Natal and Zululand. Government policy also changed. The Bambatha rebellion of 1906, organized around the Africans' refusal to pay the newly introduced poll tax, marked the last armed uprising until recent decades. The formation of the Union in 1910 and the passage of the 1913 Land Act dealt a blow to the aspirations of the growing community of Christian Africans. The Land Act was the first in a long chain of laws enacted in the Union to separate Africans and white settlers geographically, a process that had begun in the 1840s with the colonial administration. Under the Land Act, Africans were allowed to settle on only 13 percent of South African territory. In 1912, the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) had been established with a marked presence of representatives from Natal and Zululand. The period after World War I was distinguished by considerable militant action among black workers and the black petty bourgeoisie in the cities. In 1918 sanitation workers struck in Johannesburg; in 1919 antipass demonstrations organized by the SANNC87 took place on the Rand and in Pretoria; and in the same year Cape Town was hit by a dock strike. In 1920 about seventy thousand black miners went on strike, and in 1921, 171 separatist Israelites were shot by the police in Bulhoek. In this period of political and social change, when the Zulu paramount was in exile, Zulu men migrated to the towns, and increasing numbers of Zulu children went to missionary schools to learn European culture and history. British administrators and missionaries collected oral traditions from old Zulu to "preserve" the Zulu past. Two men, Rev. A. T. Bryant and school administrator James Stuart, were especially influential not only in

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collecting oral traditions but in publishing them and teaching the Zulu their own distorted history. In 1929 Bryant published his Olden Times in Zululand and Natal, which became a standard work on Zulu history. Eight years earlier, Bryant had been appointed research fellow and lecturer in Zulu history at the University of Witwatersrand. He had become an authority on Zulu history by collecting oral testimony in Natal for almost forty-five years, beginning in 1883. According to Bryant's own statement, he interviewed "men and women, of whom some had been born even in the time of Senzangakhona, many had lived and fought under his son, Shaka."88 Olden Times, a collection of traditions recorded and interpreted by Bryant, is an important historical account of early Nguni history. Bryant's explanation of his aim in publishing the book revealed his paternalistic attitude: "For us, the more richly endowed Caucasian race, we hold it an altruistic duty to our unlettered Negro brother to rescue for him from final oblivion, before too late, traditions as are still recoverable, whatever be their worthlessness to us."89 Olden Times and, to a lesser extent, Bryant's The History of the Zulu, have been cited by almost every scholar who deals with Zulu history. Even works on the oral tradition rely on Bryant's version of customs for purposes of comparison.90 Some of Bryant's arguments had no basis in the traditions he collected: For example, in his discussion of the migration of the Nguni to southern Africa, Bryant argued that "the Ngunis of the coast, the Sutus of the interior, the Hereros of the west, descended originally from the north, is obvious-they could have come from nowhere else."91 In an attempt to account for the differences in customs, physical appearance, and language among these groups, Bryant explained that the Nguni migrated in three major streams. However, his theory is based neither on oral evidence nor on archaeological findings; rather, it is pieced together from unconvincing bits and pieces of written evidence from Portuguese sailors. 92 Bryant's attempt to establish the origins of the Nguni was part of a general interest among missionaries, since the mid-nineteenth century, in finding the single point of origin for all humankind. By the time Bryant wrote, however, and in fact from the late nineteenth century on, Social Darwinism had heavily influenced all discussions of origins. His book mingled the influence of Social Darwinism and the belief, derived from his religious background, in monogenesis. Thus, according to Bryant, the stages of migration explained not only the differences among the peoples of southeast Africa but also their respective levels of development. The later they came there, the "less primitive" they were.93 Bryant's preoccupation with the origins of the Zulu produced a long series of discussions of this subject. Quite a few scholars, among whom the Reverends L. Grout and J. Shooter are the best known, claimed that the Zulu were descended from the Arabs. Others argued for a common origin

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of Jews and Zulu. This idea was common at the turn of the century and prominent until the late 1920s.94 It was based mainly on a purported similarity between the tribal distinctions and the patriarchal system of the Israelites, as described in the Bible, as well as on some common customs such as circumcision and dietary laws. In Lectures and Notes on the Zulus, James Stuart, who had a long career in the Natal civil service, summarized his discussion with Nathaniel Isaacs, himself from a Jewish family, on the "analogies between Jews and the Zulus." Stuart was not referring to polygamy, the role of the patriarch in the tribe, or other common "customs" mentioned by other writers but rather to some less well known "analogies." He wrote, for example, "It is an abomination among the Jews to break wind, e.g. when people are walking to the synagogue. The matter is regarded seriously. Even if occurring when only brothers are together, the one will check the offender. I have never heard Zulu break wind. They too look on this as filthy and abominable. He who breaks wind, in their view, befouls himself. They as a rule, see nothing funny in it."95 Isaacs and Stuart also compared the Zulu and Hebrew languages, both of which they described as "soft." Denigrating both languages, Stuart erroneously claimed that "a distinguished characteristic of Hebrew is the absence of abstract nouns" and that there were no Hebrew words for eternity, justice, truth, love, mercy, or beauty.96 He added that "Zulu is well known to be without abstract terms." Stuart's theory is that the Amalekites, a "warlike" people who were defeated by King David, were the progenitors of the Zulu. They "might have assimilated the custom of the Jews and so brought and spread them to Africa."97 Stuart, who was for a long time assistant magistrate in Durban and who was one of the foremost recorders of African oral traditions, was greatly preoccupied with Zulu history. Shula Marks offered the following explanation of his interest: Drawing on their perceptions of the English industrial revolution and British problems of urban poverty, white observers sought to fend off the rapid transformation of Africans into a proletariat and its concomitant, class conflict, through an attempt to restore "traditional values" and institutions. Stuart was obsessed with this necessity, and he devoted much of his life to shoring up what he saw as Zulu "tradition." His dedication to the recording of African oral history and to writing vernacular histories for use in African schools was part of this endeavor. 98

James Stuart published five readers in Zulu, which were studied in all Zulu schools until they were withdrawn in the late 1930s after a change in the official orthography.99 These textbooks were influential in shaping the consciousness of generations of pupils, and the image of the past that they provided was eventually incorporated into Zulu national consciousness,lOO

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Rolf Dhlomo's novels on the Zulu kings, which were later introduced as the main source of Zulu history, were based on Stuart's collection of izibongo. The praise poems in these works appear to be identical to those collected by Stuart, and C. L. S. Nyembezi, in his /zibongo Zamakhosi, also relied heavily on Stuart's texts, although he had some independent sources as well. IOJ In the 1960s, Zulu scholars were still using Stuart's collections to explain the role of tribal poetry in both the past and the present. In the late 1970s, Mazisi Kunene wrote Zulu epics derived from these texts.J02 David Rycroft summarized the influence of Stuart's work as follows: "Stuart's versions of the royal izibongo have become very widely known among Zulu speakers over the past half century. To some extent there has been a tendency to regard them as immutable, representing the only 'correct' or standard forms of the royal izibongo. A vague notion that they became crystallized into this 'ideal' form seems to have seldom been questioned, even by literary scholars."I03 Stuart not only left the largest collection of izibongo, he was also very important in shaping the study of such traditions and determining the role they would assume in Zulu literature. In "Zulu Praising and Praises," Elizabeth Gunner discussed the role of the bard (imbongi) in conserving and fabricating praise poems. She argued that Stuart failed to indicate the sources of the imbongi he recorded, thereby creating the impression that these poems were not influenced by the individual bard. This omission left the readers unaware that differing versions of the poems were affected by the ability and personal preference of individual imbongi, the particular emphases of each performance, and the nature of the audience.I04 H. Scheub pointed out that it is difficult to know what Stuart himself contributed to the collection: Because Stuart regarded himself as an imbongi, Scheub explained, he also performed as a singer for his gramophone collection of recorded praises.I05 Stuart's influence on the reconstruction of the Zulu past cannot be overstated, especially because he created the impression that the izibongo were fixed texts of which he had obtained the only real or official versions. He was responsible for the common belief that the time and place in which the praise poems were sung and the ability of the bards were of no importance. Moreover, his propensity for freezing oral poetry into official written texts contributed to yet another process of falsification. As is the case with other oral traditions, the izibongo were adapted by the bards to the necessities of the hour. Thus, izibongo not only contain praises but were also used as a tool for social and political criticism. Very often, double entendre or deeper language were used to introduce such criticism. By claiming to have recorded the true versions of the izibongo, Stuart neutralized the praises and eliminated the criticism that may have been there when he recorded them. If, as Trevor Cope argued, the function of the praise poem is to produce conformity to approved patterns of behavior, then the approved pat-

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terns must change along with the cultural values that direct them.l06 Stuart left us with praises that reflect early-twentieth-century expectations of chiefs, and he did not allow for the possibilities of subsequent changes in the content of the praise or of the introduction of criticism. As a result of his interventions, we no longer have access to the izibongo in their dynamic function, and we therefore no longer have them as evidence of change in what was expected of leaders.

NOTES 1. Letter from F. G. Farewell to Lord Charles Somerset, governor of Cape Colony, May 1, 1824, in J. Bird, Annals of Natal vol. I (Pietermaritzburg: Davis & Sons, 1888), p. 72. 2. "Grant," letter from Farewell to Somerset, September 6, 1824, in Bird, Annals, vol. 1, p. 193. 3. F. G. Farewell, in the appendix toW. F. W. Owen, Narrative of Voyages to Explore the Shores of Africa, Arabia, and Madagascar (London, 1833). 4. J. S. King, in the appendix to G. Thompson, Travels and Adventures in Southern Africa (London, 1827). 5. N. Isaacs, Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa, 2 vols. (London, 1836). 6. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 272. 7. Letter from Isaacs to H.F. Fynn, December 10, 1832, H. F. Fynn papers, Natal Archives, Pietermaritzburg. 8. For a fuller account of Isaacs's book, as well as of other nineteenth-century writing on the Zulu, see S. J. R. Martin, "British Images of the Zulu, 1820-1879," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Cambridge, 1982). 9. Isaacs, Travels, vol. 1, p. 275. 10. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 234. 11. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 275. 12. Fynn's Diary, although apparently written at the same time, was not published until 1950. H. F. Fynn, The Diary of Henry Francis Fynn, ed. J. Stuart and D. McK. Malcolm (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter and Shooter, 1950). Thus, although Fynn was seen as an authority on the Zulu in his lifetime, his influence was more restricted than Isaacs's. Fynn was fluent in Zulu and knew much more than Isaacs about Zulu customs and history; thus he gave a much more complex account. Among others he was cited by J. W. Colenso, Ten Weeks in Natal: A Journal of a First Tour of Visitation Among the Colonists and Zulu Kafirs of Natal (Cambridge, 1855); J. Shooter, The Kafirs of Natal and the Zulu Country (London: Stanford, 1857); H. Brooks, Natal: A History and Description of the Colony, ed. R. J. Mann (London, 1876); J. Y. Gibson, The Story of the Zulus (London, 1903); A. T. Bryant, Olden Times in Zululand and Natal (London: Longman, 1929). 13. I. D. Colvin, in the introduction to the 1979 Africana edition of Isaacs, Travels. 14. Martin suggests that Isaacs's Travels was closely akin to the popular fiction of the 1830s, which was influenced by a Gothic tradition that emphasized the terrifying and the violent subject matter. See Martin, "British Images," pp. 55-56. 15. "Extract of a letter from Mr. P. Retief, dated Port Natal, November 18,

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1837," in J. C. Chase, ed., The Natal Papers; A Reprint of All Public Documents Connected with the Territory Including a Description of the Country and a History of Events from 1498-1843, part I (Cape Town: Struik, 1966), p. 129. 16. For some versions of the Retief story and explanations of Dingane's motives, see E. A. Walker, "Extract from a Zulu Account of the Retief Massacre," in The Critic: A South African Quarterly Journal (January 1935); and C. J. Uys, "What Was Dingane's Motive in Murdering Retief and His Men?" in The Outspan, December 18, 1942. For a discussion of the incorporation of the story into Afrikaner nationalist mythology, see L. Thompson, The Political Mythology of the Apartheid (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). 17. Thompson, The Political Mythology, p. 39. The Voortrekkers Monument is the same monument to which I refer in the introduction. 18. Daily News (Pretoria) August 15, 16, and 21, 1957. According to the document (also printed in Chase, The Natal Papers, part II, pp. 71-72), Dingane gave Retief the same tract of land that Shaka previously gave Farewell and that Dingane later granted to Gardiner. Was there ever such a document signed by Dingane? This question has recently been added to the debate. 19. There is some doubt regarding the authenticity of the diary. Both Simon Maphalala, the Inkatha historian, and M. G. Gumede, an amateur historian who used to be KwaZulu health minister, point out the impossibility of Owen's seeing anything from the distance at which he claimed to have witnessed the killings. 20. J. Guy, The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom-The Civil War in Zululand, 1879-1884 (London: Longman, 1979), p. 41. 21. For the colonial economic situation in Natal, see H. Slater, "Land, Labour and Capital in Natal: The Natal Land and Colonisation Company, 1860-1948," Journal of African History 16, 2 (1975). See also D. Welsh, The Roots of Segregation: Native Policy in Colonial Natal, 1845-1910 (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1971). 22. Guy, The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, p. 43. 23. Welsh, The Roots of Segregation, pp. 20-22. 24. S. Marks, Reluctant Rebellion-The 1906-1908 Disturbances in Natal (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 4. 25. Letter from Cloete to Montague, November 10, 1843, as quoted in Welsh, The Roots of Segregation, p. 12. 26. Slater, "The Changing Pattern of Economic Relationships in Rural Natal," esp. pp. 157-159. 27. Ibid., pp. 150-151. 28. Welsh, The Roots of Segregation, p. 40. 29. See, for example, Gibson, The Story of the Zulus; Bryant, Olden Times in Zululand and Natal; E. A. Ritter, Shaka Zulu (London: Longman, 1955). 30. Secretaries for native affairs were seen throughout the nineteenth century as experts on Zulu history and society. Although the name of the position has been changed to suit new ideological conceptions, its holders are still regarded as experts. S. Bourquain, who served during the 1970s, is regarded as an authority on Zulu history and society and has published on the subject, as have C. Faya, S. 0. Samuelson, and so on. 31. Theophilus Shepstone to the 1883 commission, as cited in Welsh, The Roots of Segregation, p. 3. 32. Shepstone gave the same lecture in 1875, and it was published in 1888 in Bird, Annals, pp. 155-166.

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33. Fynn's study was not published until 1888, and his diary did not appear until 1950. 34. Fynn, in Bird, Annals, p. 61 35. Shepstone, in ibid., p. 160. 36. Ibid., p. 165. 37. When the Shepstonian plan of divide and conquer eventually reached its full realization, Shepstone was no longer in charge of Natal. The plan, however, was based on his advice. After the 1879 war, Zululand was divided by the British into thirteen chiefdoms. In an attempt to ignore the effects of sixty years of Zulu rule, the Mthethwa chiefdom was "revived," and a chief was appointed to rule it independently. 38. Bird, Annals, vol. 1, p. 157. 39. Shepstone, SAN 11617, Shepstone collection, Natal Archives, Pietermaritzburg. 40. Shepstone, in the Natal Mercury, January 29, 1892, as quoted in Marks, Reluctant Rebellion, p. 96 41. Marks, Reluctant Rebellion, pp. 97-98. 42. Ibid., pp. 39-40. 43. In 1843 there were only ninety-four known tribes. By 1906 there were 238 in Natal and eighty-three in Zululand. See ibid., p. 35. 44. Brooks, Natal: A History, pp. 197-201; F. B. Fynney, The Rise and Fall of the Zulu Nation (London, 1880), p. 2. Fynney told his readers that Dingiswayo heard about the whites and "was determined to see this wonderful people." 45. Gibson, The Story of the Zulus, pp. 7-14. 46. W. C. Holden, Past and Future of the Kaffir Races (London: William Nicholls, 1886), p. 7. 47. Ibid., p. 9. 48. Ibid., p. 11. 49. W. C. Holden, History of the Colony of Natal (London: William Nicholls, 1855), p. 57. 50. Ibid., p. 55. 51. H. Callaway, Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus (London, 1866); The Religious System of the Amazulu (London, 1868). 52. Martin, "British Images," pp. 119-120. 53. H. Callaway, introduction, Nursery Tales. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. L. Grout, Zulu-Land, or Life Among the Zulu-Kafirs of Nataland and ZuluLand (London: Trubner, 1864). 57. This view was expressed by Fynn in his "Evidence Before the Natal 'Kafir' Commission," in Bird, Annals, vol. I, p. 104. See also Grout, Zulu-Land, pp. 63-67; and Shooter, The Kafirs of Natal, pp. 1-2. 58. Holden, Past and Future, pp. 1-6. 59. J. W. Colenso, The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshuah Critically Examined, 5 vols. (London, 1862-1879). 60. Guy, The Heretic, p. 95. 61. Ibid., p. 73. 62. Ibid., pp. 197-200. 63. J. W. Colenso, Izindaba, in Izindatyana zaBantukanye nezindaba zase'eNatal (Pietermaritzburg, 1859). Magema Fuze, the printer and a convert who

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lived in Bishopstowe, included chapters of this book in his The Black People and Whence They Came. I have not seen this book, as copies are rare, but rely on T. Cope in his edition of Fuze, The Black People and Whence They Came: A Zulu View (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press and Killie Campbell Library, 1979), p. 169 (n. 1). 64. J. W. Colenso, First Lessons in Science (Ekakhanyeni, 1861), as quoted in Guy, The Heretic, p. 65. 65. In 1871 there were about 16,000 whites in Natal, in 1891 about 46,000, and in 1891 about 97,000. See Marks, Reluctant Rebellion, p. 6, and Guy, The Heretic, p. 194. 66. Guy, The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, introduction. 67. Rider Haggard divided his fiction into two broad categories. The books he called novels were set in contemporary England. Those he called romances contained some element of fantasy and were set in previous ages or distant continents. N. Etherington, Rider Haggard (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984), p. 21. 68. P. Raining, ed., The Best Short Stories of Rider Haggard (London: Michael Joseph, 1981). 69. Haggard, "The Real King Solomon's Mines," in Raining, The Best Short Stories of Rider Haggard, pp. 19-35. 70. Etherington, Rider Haggard, p. 6. 71. H. R. Haggard, Cetywayo and His White Neighbours (London: Trubner, 1881). 72. H. R. Haggard, Cetywayo and His White Neighbours, 2nd ed. (London: Trubner, 1888), introduction. 73. Ibid. 74. H. R. Haggard, Child of Storm (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1913). 75. H. R. Haggard, Nada the Lily (London: Macdonald, 1949). 76. Haggard, Nada the Lily, p. 22. 77. C. Cowley, Kwa-Zulu: Queen Mkabi's Story (Cape Town: Struik, 1966). 78. H. R. Haggard, Marie (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912); Child of Storm; Finished(London: Ward Lock, 1917). 79. Haggard's historical works were praised by his recent biographer, Morton Cohen, as accurate and useful for historians. Cohen, Rider Haggard, Life and Works (London: Hutchinson, 1960), pp. 228-229. Etherington, who was much more critical of Haggard's historical romances, also managed not to see this intervention in Zulu history as problematic. He wrote, "The most serious charge that can be brought in evidence against him [Haggard] is that he trivializes Zulu history by making personalities responsible for changing its course at important junctures." Etherington, Rider Haggard, p. 71. 80. Haggard, Child of Storm, p. 2. 81. T. Cope, introduction to his edition of Fuze, The Black People and Whence They Came. 82. R. N. Stromberg, European Intellectual History Since 1789 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), pp. 136-139. 83. M. M. Fuze, introduction to Abantu Abamnyama. All my citations are from Cope's edition of Fuze, The Black People and Whence They Came. 84. The author was probably referring to Egypt when he suggested that the place of origin was the Suez Canal. 85. N. Etherington, Preachers, Peasants and Politics in Southeast Africa 1835-1880: African Christian Communities in Natal, Pondoland and Zululand (London: Royal Historical Society, 1978), p. 24.

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86. Ibid., pp. 170-173. 87. The SANNC was later renamed the African National Congress. 88. Bryant, Olden Times in Zululand, preface. 89. Ibid. 90. See, for example, Cope, Izibongo-Zulu Praise Poems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968); M. Kunene, "An Analytic Survey of Zulu Poetry," M.A. thesis (University of Natal, Durban, 1962); or M. Kunene, Emperor Shaka the Great-A Zulu Epic (London: Heinemann, 1979). 91. Bryant, Olden Times in Zululand, chap. 1. 92. S. Marks, "The Traditions of the Natal 'Nguni': A Second Look at the Work of A. T. Bryant," in L. M. Thompson, ed., African Societies in Southern Africa (New York: Praeger Publications, 1969). 93. Bryant, Olden Times in Zululand, p. 5. 94. See, for example, S. Mendelssohn, "Judaic or Semitic Legends and Customs Amongst South African Natives," Journal of the African Society 13 (1913): pp. 395-441; 14 (1914): 24-34. 95. J. Stuart, "Talk with Mr. Isaacs," December 15, 1919, in Stuart papers (file 26), Killie Campbell Africana Library. It was not Nathaniel Isaacs who wrote Travels and Adventures, but one of his sons. 96. There are Zulu and Hebrew words for each of these abstract nouns. 97. Stuart, "Talk with Mr. Isaacs." 98. S. Marks, "Patriotism, Patriarchy and Purity: Natal and the Politics of Zulu Ethnic Consciousness," in L. Vail, ed., The Creation of Tradition in Southern Africa (London: James Currey, 1989). 99. D. Rycroft, "Zulu Izibongo," p. 61. 100. As argued by M. B. Yengwa, interviewed August 13, 1986, London; Dr. M.S. Gumede, interviewed July 1984; andY. Zondi, interviewed August 1984. 101. E. A. W. Gunner, "Ukuboonga Nezibongo-Zulu Praising and Praises," unpublished. Ph.D. dissertation (University of London, 1984), p. 18. 102. Stuart's collection was edited by Cope in lzibongo-Zulu Praise Poems. 103. Rycroft, "Zulu Izibongo," p. 62. 104. Gunner, "Zulu Praising and Praises," p. 65. 105. H. Scheub, personal communication, November 2, 1986. 106. Cope, Izibongo-Zulu Praise Poems, p. 31.

3 IN SEARCH OF ROOTS AND PRIDE: THE ZULU PAST AND THE LEADERSHIP OF THE CHRISTIAN AFRICAN COMMUNITY

With the growing political militancy in Natal in the 1920s and the formation of the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU), the leaders of the Christian Zulu community-the amakholwa (the converted)-sought influential new allies to avoid being swept aside by the new mood. The educated leaders, who had previously shown disdain toward their traditional leaders, now developed a respectful regard for the tribal aristocracy. These leaders' interest in allies also reflected the influence of the panAfricanist ideology, which was becoming increasingly popular among the educated African elite at the same time that the doctrines of Booker T. Washington were losing influence to the more assertive ideas of Marcus Garvey. Calling for a political struggle for equality, Garvey's Back to Africa movement swept through black America in the early 1920s and influenced the shaping of the African doctrines of black nationalism and pan-Africanism.l The educated African petty bourgeois elite in the province of Natal reinterpreted these doctrines to conform to the Zulu context. They transformed the drive for pan-African unity and nationalism into a quest for Zulu unity. In a "search for roots," leaders of the African petty bourgeoisie approached the Zulu royal family and other traditional leaders in an attempt to reactivate Zulu cultural, political, and social customs. This attitude was most pronounced in approaches to King Solomon, the paramount chief, and it eventually led to the formation of Inkatha in 1924. Initiated as the Zulu National Congress by educated Zulu outside Zululand, Inkatha later developed into a link between the educated and traditional elites in Natal and Zululand. The original Zulu inkatha, from which the name of the organization was taken, was a coil of woven grass representing the unity and spiritual essence of the nation. This coil of grass had been passed down from king to king and thus symbolized the continuity of the nation over time.

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Apart from the influence of pan-Africanism and the new militancy in black politics, the formation of Inkatha and the creation of a new alliance between the modern and traditional elites was encouraged in part by the state's segregationist policy. Under the 1920 Native Administration Act, rural local councils were the only constitutional forums in which Africans could express their views. The members of these councils were also the only Africans who were still allowed to purchase land after the delimitation of the reserves was finalized. The petty bourgeois leaders who formed Inkatha hoped to receive government recognition as a native council. At Inkatha's first meeting in October 1924, the agenda included creation of a Zulu National Fund; the question of a response to the 1920 act; the creation of Umpini, an agriculture fund; and obtaining ownership of the site of Shaka's grave.z The discussion of Shaka's grave and the creation of a fund "to acquire from the Government the piece of land on which the grave is situated, to erect a memorial, and also a building" marked Inkatha's first step along the path of a new kind of nationalism. It is ironic, and perhaps symbolic, that the leaders of an organization whose name symbolized continuity with Zulu tradition were forced to go to the government for the land for a monument to their national leader. But this was only one of many paradoxes in Inkatha's attitude toward the old and the new. Nicolas Cope convincingly suggests that "in their search for 'roots' and a suitable symbol for their present cultural and political objectives, educated and 'civilised' Africans passed over the very many rituals associated with the original Inkatha which they would unquestionably have regarded as 'backward', if not loathesome."3 By creating a new Inkatha, the petty bourgeois leaders hoped to renew a tradition that no longer existed. They tried to bring back notions and traditions from the past for use in the present, and they also sought to renew the tradition of continuity. But, in claiming Shaka's image from the past and worshiping him as he had never been worshiped before-at the site of a ceremonial grave-the Inkatha organization created a symbol not of the unity of the nation Shaka had founded but of a new idea of unity and Zulu nationalism. At the same 1924 meeting, a disagreement arose about another form of commemorating Shaka. According to Rev. Oscroft: Solomon had previously agreed that a building ought to be erected in which the various Christian bodies could all hold services. He asked that such a building should be called the "Chaka Zulus Church," to commemorate Chaka, who is looked upon as the founder of the Zulu nation and power. This title was accepted by the meeting. The matter of ways and means was referred by the meeting to a committee of five [all educated]. They reported later on that the name of the building should be the "African National Church."4

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This proposal met with strong opposition from local Zulu, and the project was shelved. These two topics discussed in the first meeting of Inkatha-Shaka's memorial and the church-related to the educated elite's views of the Zulu past and present. While recognizing Shaka as a national leader and endeavoring to emphasize his importance as part of their Zulu identity, the elite was also attempting to maintain its extra-Zulu alliances as well as its links with other non-Zulu petty bourgeois leaders. The elite's failure in 1924 to integrate the Zulu past into the wider rubric of "African National" was an ironic anticipation of the perceived separation of Zulu identity from the wider national cause today. In 1928 Inkatha established a new constitution that reflected the growing closeness between the petty bourgeoisie and the traditional leadership and was aimed at maintaining separate Zulu traditions and a sense of Zulu nationhood. This alliance was tightened mainly because the rift between the rank and file and the petty bourgeoisie and traditional elite was deepening. Although the educated petty bourgeoisie had developed a respectful regard for the tribal aristocracy, in the militant mood of the 1920s Zulu mine workers, "could not find in Solomon the leadership they wanted."5 Solomon represented a backward-looking ethnicity rather than an emerging common identity as workers. The formation of Inkatha enabled petty bourgeois leaders to cooperate with rural chiefs, especially in the purchase and development of land. The possibility of buying land as a tribe became particularly important after the 1913 Native Act outlawed individual land purchases. Inkatha was thus created at the convergence of two lines of pressure: on one hand the need to find ways of purchasing land, together with pan-Africanist ideas and the search for roots inspired by black Americans, and fear of increasing working-class militancy in the urban areas; on the other hand the new drive by the government to enforce segregationist policy. Both of these factors gave rise to the alliance between the petty bourgeois and the traditional elite, and thereby to the formation of Inkatha. The alliance was not without tensions. As Shula Marks has suggested: While proclaiming the virtues of their past and the wholesomeness of traditions. the "new African" was too much a product of the mission station and western culture to give unreserved approval to an unconditional return to "tribal" life. Moreover, precisely because restructured ethnicity was designed to forge an alliance between members of the Christian intelligentsia and landowners and the precolonial ruling class it was never free of tension. The ideology was composed of disparate elements drawn from very different traditions: on the one hand, precolonial ideology focused around the Zulu king, as the symbol of the unity of the nation; on the other, the aspirations of Christian converts imbued in the nineteenth

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century notions not only of progress and improvement but also of universalism, the possibilities of individual assimilation to western norms and a constitutional monarchy.6 The new alliance had an effect on Ilanga Lase Natal, a newspaper in English and Zulu that was the organ of the Natal petty bourgeoisie. In it, King Solomon received ample space to "warn the Zulus" to "keep away from the I.C.U," and the newspaper advertised Inkatha meetings.? Rev. John L. Dube had established Ilanga Lase Natal in 1903, a few years after returning from the United States, where he had gone to study under the aegis of the American Board of Missions. While there, Dube was influenced by the ideas of Booker T. Washington, who argued that blacks needed practical education and that they would reach equality through education and industry rather than political agitation. Upon his return to South Africa, Dube established an agricultural-industrial school in the Inanda district that was set up along the lines of Tuskegee, the school Washington had founded in Alabama. Ilanga Lase Natal stressed the importance of Christianity and education. In its first years of existence, the newspaper frequently pointed out the differences between the educated and the "raw native," Dube writing that "the Christian and civilised natives were, upon the whole, more industrious than the heathen."8 Ilanga also devoted attention to questions of Zulu orthography and the "native problem." The dictionaries of both Colenso and Bryant, for example, were widely advertised in the newspaper over a period of many months. But it was the paper's change in editorial policy concerning the "native problem" that exemplified the evolution of opinion among the Zulu educated urban elite. In 1905 Ilanga assured its readers that it "does not by any means plead for social equality. It would not be a good thing for either race .... But what we want is to be treated as children ... as children who will be encouraged to enjoy the blessing of fitness as soon as they are able."9 By the 1920s, however, the paper's editors were demanding representation in the South African Assembly and urging government recognition of Solomon as paramount chief. At the same time as its change in the perception of the "native problem," Ilanga also revised its notions of the Zulu past and moved from describing Shaka as a cruel savage at the beginning of the century to praising him as a great leader by the 1920s. One early editorial by Dube stated: "We Zulu feared Chaka but did not love him. Many tribes crossed the Tugela in quest of liberty. Some white people say that we natives are accustomed to be ruled harshly because our kings used to rule us in that way. Yes we were ruled in that way, but we did not like it at all."IO But by the mid-1920s, the "Native Teacher" column in Ilanga published a "Synoptic Discourse on Bantu History" in which "Shaka the great" was described as

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enjoying "the adoration of the people of his empire."!! The shift was not a complete one, for it was still possible to find attitudes of both admiration and contempt toward Shaka in the paper's pages in the later period. However, references to Shaka's cruelty in the late 1920s were couched in apologetic terms and were mentioned alongside statements praising his achievements. Until the 1920s Ilanga perceived Zulu history through the eyes of the white missionaries. For example, the paper published Bryant's History of the Zulu in seventeen long installments. In pointing out the importance of Bryant's contribution to the education of Zulu youth, the editor wrote: "We certainly think it adds something to the knowledge of Zulu boys and girls who are in school and those who have been educated. Some of these boys and girls can tell you about England and its kings, but they cannot tell you who Dingaan's father was. This is not what it ought to be."l2 In other words, Bryant's History of the Zulu was being published in !lang a Lase Natal to make up for the omissions of mission education. Ironically, even this remedial version of Zulu history was written by a white missionary from a European point of view that described the "discovery" of Africa and of its inhabitants by the Arabs, the Portuguese, and the Dutch before "the advent of the British in South Africa." Employing evolutionary notions, Bryant described at length the transformation of "the Negro" into a "superior type, now known as the Bantu," and the migration of the Bantu into southern Africa. He depicted Shaka as heartless and his achievements as of "the gory kind": "The fame of his soldiers was born of marvels of brutality, of deeds that brought down no benison for themselves or their country, nor furnished any inspiring lesson to mankind around them."l3 llanga challenged neither Bryant's description of Shaka nor his long and detailed study of the different clans in Zululand.l4 From the editorials on Dingane Day (later called the Day of the Covenant), we learn that Ilanga was even tolerant of the Afrikaners' version of the Dingane-Retief battle, later called the Battle of Blood River, because Dingane was sometimes described in the paper as a "treacherous savage," and his order to kill the trekkers was declared "wicked and heinous." But the generally apologetic tone of the editorials was at times supplemented by more assertive claims that Dingane Day should not be celebrated because it recalled past hatreds and stood in the way of a good relationship between blacks and whites in the present. In 1922, the editor wrote: We do not for a moment try to justify the action of Dingaan in doing to death those who were to him in the relation of guests and deserved protection, in the massacre of February 1838, but in an open battle with the invaders, we think he was wholly in the right as defending his country from easily falling into the hands of new and hard masters .... However

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what has happened has happened and cannot be recalled. Let us forget Dingaan and his transgressions and failures, and harness ourselves for the living present. IS In 1924 the paper cited the treaty that was allegedly signed by Dingane and Retief, adding: "It is no wonder that after signing this treaty Dingaan 'saw red' and massacred Retief and his followers. To take a man's whole country as far as the land may be useful in return for a few thousand cattle is nothing a civilised man should be proud of."l6 For the petty bourgeois leadership represented by /lang a's editors, the 1920s were years of transformation and change. The newspaper moved from attempts to forget the "heathen" past to reminding its readers that "the Zulu is the aristocrat of the South African Native."!? These were the last years of belief in Christian liberalism and the early years of disillusionment. Amid a celebration of a centenary of "life under Christian people" and "the superiority of the newcomers," the educated elite seemed no longer to ardently believe in the possibility of living "side by side in comfort." By the late 1920s, popular militancy began to be reflected in a more radicalized depiction of the past, and ANC president J. T. Gumede drew a picture of colonization that was very much at odds with the liberal view: All the land was taken from us in the name of the crown of Great Britain and the people were driven away from their ancestral homes which were turned into farms. During the days of Kimberley when they wanted labour very badly, they induced the Natives because they did not have money and did not value it, to go and work for them for rifles .... You will remember the Zulu war. I am a Zulu and it is a very painful story to relate. There was no occasion for that war. It was only because Zulu power was considered by the Europeans a menace to the colonies, so all sorts of stories were sent to Great Britain to make the British people turn against the Zulus. 18 But when Gumede praised the Soviet Union as the "new Jerusalem" after returning from a visit there, /lang a's editors accused him of being an irresponsible communist who "embraces doctrines from a nation of whom we know next to nothing except that its people are not happy and are badly governed."i9 Gumede represented an alternative form of political militancy, in opposition to the conformism of the Natal educated elite that was dominant in Ilanga.20 His analysis of the proletarization of the Africans reminds us that, for all its preoccupation with the past, the Natal petty bourgeoisie mostly preferred to deal with the glorious days of the Zulu kingdom rather than face the economic and social consequences of colonialism and industrialization. The study of Zulu history was very selective. For example, neither the destruction of the Zulu empire nor the transformation of the

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Zulu into migrant laborers was ever examined with any depth by the petty bourgeois leaders. However, as the petty bourgeoisie is the source of most of the written works on the Zulu past, it is primarily its ideas that I shall examine below. The first written work on Zulu history to represent the new spirit of pan-Africanism and nationalism was written not by a Zulu but by a Sotho. Thomas Mofolo's novel, Chaka, brought the idea of reviving the past to thousands of readers. First published in 1925, it described Shaka's "rise from the dust to which he has been reduced, not only to regain the lost heritage of his father's kingdom, but indeed to become King of kings, that all men shall bow before him; and he shall without pity or compunction, remove all obstacles between him and his goal."21 Before Chaka Mofolo had published two other novels, both of which were well received by the missionaries as well as by many Basotho readers.22 Although he had completed Chaka before 1910, it was not until the 1920s, with the encouragement of the Rev. A. Casalis, that he revised and prepared the manuscript for publication.23 The 1931 English translation by F. H. Dutton was widely read both in South Africa and in Europe. Chaka was later translated into French, German, and Italian. More recently, abridged versions have been published in Swahili and Afrikaans. A 1981 English translation by Daniel Kunene made the well-known Dutton version look like a fake because Kunene omitted the Afrikaans words, which were prominent in the first translation, and attempted to return to the style and idioms of the original. Although the influence of missionary and Western conceptions is less prominent in the new translation, it is still strongly apparent in Mofolo's novel. By his own testimony, the author had no intention of telling "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the Zulu king"; he explained that "much has been left out, and much has been written that did not actually happen, with the aim solely of fulfilling my purpose in writing this book."24 This purpose, according to Kunene, was "to build up greater intensity in the plot, and to increase dramatic tensions by creating new juxtapositions of highly volatile events and situations."25 One may assume that Mofolo's other purposes were to introduce Sotho readers to the heroic story of the Zulu king and kingdom and to teach them a Christian moral lesson, for Chaka tells the story of a man ruined by his own power. Mofolo's Shaka destroys his kingdom, his people, and himself. He lives alone with the knowledge of the magnitude of his guilt and dies alone. But Mofolo still portrays Shaka as a great and important leader: "Even when his body is already riddled with spears," he turns slowly and without anger to his assassins to speak to them; but they run away, for he is still "the lion, the elephant, of Zulu descent."26 Mofolo' s Chaka was one of few works to reflect the search for roots

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prior to the mid-1930s, when Zulu writers started publishing their own historical novels.27 Ten years after Chaka was first published, similar works by Zulu writers began to appear. These were years of disillusion for the African petty bourgeoisie. In the 1930s and 1940s white segregationists were gaining support in their attempts to construct an artificial tribalism, and representatives of the Natal sugar planters pushed their own segregationist schemes. One of these rich landowners, George Heaton Nicholls, first coined the term "parallel development" as he promoted one of General J. B. M. Hertzog's segregationist bills. Nicholls, a member of parliament (MP) from Zululand since 1920, played an important role in parliament in representing the interests of planters against those of the large mine owners.28 A member of the Native Affairs Commission, Nicholls was a longtime advocate of segregation as a way to "preserve Zulu tribal authority." Like other landowners in Natal, he viewed the tribal system and the reserves as means of assuring control over African labor. Natal landowners and sugar planters used the kraalhead system, in which contracts were made only with the head of the household and not with each family member. Under this system they were not responsible for all the workers' economic needs, and it was up to the household head to make sure that all members of the family had work.29 Nicholls argued that whites were faced with a choice between a Bantu nation, "whose evolving civilisation we can advance and respect ... or a Black proletariat using all the recognised methods for the complete overthrow of the whites on the basis of class." 30 At the end of 1935, two bills were presented to a joint session of the two houses of parliament. The Native Land and Trust Bill confirmed the 1913 act and made the de facto prohibition on the purchase of lands by Africans permanent. It proposed leaving 12 percent of the Union's land to the Africans and abolished the right that Africans still possessed in the Cape Province to purchase land outside the reserves. The Representation of Natives Bill removed Cape African voters from the common voter roll and limited African parliamentary representation to three elected white members for the Cape and four elected white senators for Africans in the rest of the Union. The black leadership throughout the country failed to respond to the Hertzog bills in one voice. A Natal regional conference led by John Dube was held on October 22, 1935, to discuss the bills. The conference took a "soft" line on the franchise question and issued no criticism of the land proposals. Other regional conferences came out with much stronger condemnations of both bills. They opposed the displacement of African squatters without adequate guarantees of the proper provision of land elsewhere, and called for a large public loan to be placed at the disposal of the Trust, which would then work out a long-range plan of African land purchase and development. 31

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Although the Natal regional conference did not criticize the Native Land Bill, voices of opposition were raised among the educated Natalian elite. Indeed, a tour by Dube of Zululand in an attempt to persuade people of the justice of the segregationist bill was strongly opposed by African Christian leaders. Even Ilanga's editor attacked the bills, arguing that no territory had been provided for the "Bantu Nation" and that it was impossible to "cut off the native from the industrial inventions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."32 The petty bourgeoisie realized that these bills marked the failure of the liberal notion of incorporating blacks into a colorblind middle class. Shortly before the bills were published, the South African Communist Party called for a "united front of demonstrations and mass action throughout the country against the passing of the bills and in defence of the Cape Native Franchise."33 White liberals too organized protests, but the bills were passed in April 1936.34 The passage of the Hertzog bills caused serious disillusionment among educated Africans and profoundly changed their opinions as to their future prospects. Disappointed in white liberals, who could offer no more to the growing African population than a vague promise of a prospective Bantu nation located in inappropriate small and unintegrated areas, many drew away from liberal and Christian ideas of universalism and began to search for their own roots in the past. New alliances among Africans were created, the older and more moderate leadership forming the Zulu Society and the younger and more militant generation eventually becoming involved in the formation of the ANC Youth League. Formed in 1936, the Zulu Society aimed at preserving Zulu oral history and literature. The society was affiliated with the Natal Bantu Teachers Union, and its founders and members were drawn mainly from the Christian elite. Like Inkatha before it, the Zulu Society's preoccupation with the past generated relatively mundane prescriptions for the problematic present. Its leaders, among them Chief Albert Luthuli, used the society's platform to call for the improvement of education in rural areas, better salaries for teachers, and higher status for chiefs.35 Though the society was concerned with preserving the past, its platform was also designed to strengthen the society's relationship with government authorities in the present.36 Thus, it simultaneously promoted Christianity and collected and preserved Zulu traditions. As its charter proclaimed, the society's double task was "to encourage our people to acquire helpful knowledge from others who are in advance of us, and from such knowledge to improve what is worthy in our Heritage."37 The Zulu Society took a special interest in maintaining the purity of the Zulu language. In this context, it published a list of acceptable abbreviations for Zulu titles as well as correct spellings of the names of places and of Zulu kings.38 The society collected oral evidence from old Zulu and also

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recorded modern versions of traditional forms. Examples are the praise poems composed about the Royal Air Force, the South African Air Force, and the Royal Navy during World War II. In time, the Zulu Society drew criticism both from radicals and from moderates for its links with the government. Support~d by the Native Affairs Department and located in state offices, the sodety had links with the white establishment that other blacks considered to be too close. Indeed, the man who had encouraged parliament .to extend a grant to the Zulu Society in 1937 was George Heaton Nicholls, the representative of the Natal segregationists. When Jordan Ngubane strongly criticized the society in 1946, he claimed that it aimed to "undermine the work of Congress in Natal."39 The 1940s were the last days of the society. In 1948 it ceased to exist because of inadequate funds and organization. The search for an independent African culture rooted in the past gave rise to a wave of historical literature. The bestsellers of the period were Rolf Dhlomo's novels on the Zulu kings, and the historical plays of his brother, Herbert Dhlomo, were also very successful. The works of the Dhlomo brothers reflected the change in African literature at the time from a focus on "modern life" to a search of traditional values and pride. Herbert Dhlomo (1903-1956) was a prominent writer in English, a critic, and a journalist.40 Two of his early plays maintained that progress was a good thing and that tribalism should be destroyed and replaced by modernity.4 1 Because progress was one of Herbert Dhlomo's chief concerns, he rejected segregation on the basis that it preserved the traditional and did not allow for change. In 1929 he wrote that "traditions, social customs and laws that stand up against progress must be combatted and exterminated at all costs and hazards." 42 However, the play Cetshwayo was very different in its scope. Written in late 1936 or early 1937, it reflected the disillusionment of the author and his educated friends. In this play, Dhlomo went back to what he saw as the origins of segregationist policies, attempting to indicate the resistance with which they had always been met. When he criticized Shepstone in the play, he was in fact criticizing Hertzog's segregationist plans. Thus, he had Parks, Shepstone's assistant, challenge his superior: "It seems to me, Sir, your policy seeks to create two different civilisations and two conflicting states in one country at one and the same time. It seems impossible to me, sir. It would be dangerous even if it were possible. You cannot have two parallel lines that do not meet in human affairs where life is relative."43 The implied comparison between the policies of Shepstone and Hertzog pointed to the roots of segregation in the mid-nineteenth century. Dhlomo criticized segregation not only on moral grounds but also on the basis that it is neither practical nor possible in the long run. To support the idea that segregation is bad for both blacks and whites, Dhlomo chose Cetshwayo, who fought to

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keep his kingdom separate and independent, as the mouthpiece to introduce his call for assimilation and progress. Throughout the play he blamed Shepstone for not "knowing the natives" and for misunderstanding their customs. In a brilliant analysis that was innovative for its time, Dhlomo explained the real motivation behind the British war on Zululand and showed that its main aim was to provide a cheap labor force for Europeans, to end competition between white and Zulu farmers, and to crush Zulu military independence. Cetshwayo marked the beginning of a new period of writing for Dhlomo. It embodied his belief in weaving traditional elements into modern literature because, as he explained, "the Izibongo ... reveal the common origin, the spiritual unity, the essential Oneness, the single destiny of all Bantu Tribes."44 In the same article, Dhlomo explained the role of the writer and the importance of the past in a time of transition: It is a time when men discover in their history great heroes whose activi-

ties are near enough to be of interest and meaning, but remote enough to form subjects of great, dispassionately passionate creative literature. It is a time when men realise they can preserve and glorify the past not by reverting back to it, but by immortalising it in art. It is a time when men embrace the old and seize upon the new; when they combine the native and alien, the traditional and the foreign, into something new and beautiful.

But Herbert Dhlomo did not write only about Zulu heroes. His play Moshoeshoe, the story of the Sotho leader, was performed to great acclaim in 1939.45 The play depicted Moshoeshoe as an ideal leader who gathered together many disparate clans and individuals and unified them into a single nation. With this play Dhlomo emphasized the importance of the heritage of all Africans to the creation of a national epic. This idea of unification contrasted sharply with the notions of the educated Zulu elite that created Inkatha in the 1920s. Dhlomo's plays, seen and read by hundreds, were very influential.46 Although he never joined the Zulu Society or the ANC Youth League, his works reveal a similar interest in the Zulu past, which was so dominant in the first organization and was also important for some of the leaders of the second. Herbert's older brother, Rolf Dhlomo, wrote historical novels about the Zulu kings that were probably the most widely read works in the Zulu language. Rolf Dhlomo graduated from Adams College and then taught for a short period. Possibly as early as 1923 he seems to have been a clerk at the City and Suburban Mine in Johannesburg.47 He wrote a fairly regular column in Ilanga Lase Natal in which he stressed the need for unity among blacks, a unity best attained through Christianity. He was a political moder-

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ate and tended to advise against strikes.48 Sometimes writing under his own name but more often using the pseudonym Rollie Reggie, he called for the creation of a national literature and the preservation of "Native songs": "Our folklore and historical record must be preserved from dying out, anything of racial pride, by means of a literature, otherwise these will be lost forever and our connection with the past forgotten."49 Like his brother, Rolf Dhlomo was moved in the mid-1930s to write about the Zulu past. His works on the Zulu kings were read in schools throughout the 1950s and sold thousands of copies.50 They are still regarded by Zulu intellectuals as the main source of information about the kings. Herbert Dhlomo pointed out the importance of such books: "He has shown that we too have great men in the past."51 In fact, Rolf Dhlomo's books replaced Stuart's, both in schools and as a source of knowledge for the educated elite.52 His collection of praise poems, although identical to Stuart's collection, was regarded as national poetry to be committed to memory by Zulu students. The Dhlomo brothers were very influential because their views reached a vast number of readers through their literature and their newspaper columns. They wrote for many African newspapers and edited Ilanga for a few years beginning in 1943. Together, they can be credited with the retrieval of Dingane's image as a national hero rather than a villain and a cheat. Although they were probably not the first to express this view, they were among the most instrumental in spreading it. 53 Jordan Ngubane, a younger man but a very close friend of the Dhlomo brothers and an important journalist and writer in his own right, further developed the shift in the image of Dingane from villain to hero. Ngubane, the son of a policeman, was born in 1917 near Ladysmith. He graduated from Adams College in 1937, at which time he was offered the assistant editorship of Ilanga Lase Nata[.54 His interest in politics intensified when he worked with Selope Thema on the Bantu World in Johannesburg in the early 1940s. He was active in the formation of the ANC Youth League and was responsible, together with Lembede and A. P. Mda, for its manifesto of 1944. Later that year he returned to Natal to take up the editorship of Inkundla ya Bantu, by then the only newspaper in South Africa owned entirely by Africans. Ngubane was a particularly effective editor, and under his leadership circulation reached seven thousand by October 1946. This audience was perhaps the largest ever reached by an African-owned political newspaper in South Africa.55 Inkundla's readership was concentrated mainly in the ANC strongholds of Natal, the Eastern Cape, and the southern Transvaal. Contributors ranged from Lembede, the first president of the ANC Youth League, to Edgar Brookes, the white liberal who represented Africans in the South African Senate. Ngubane used the power of his newspaper to promote the downfall of

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Natal's older and more conservative leaders, particularly A. W. G. Champion. He waged a campaign to elevate Albert Luthuli to prominence, first as a leader in Natal and then as president general of the ANC. However, in the 1950s Ngubane criticized Luthuli severely for his willingness to accommodate the ANC's left wing. Indeed, it was Ngubane's strong aversion to communist tactics and philosophy and his opposition to the ANC left wing that caused him to leave the Youth League for the Liberal Party. In the late 1950s he was elected national vice chairman of the party. From 1959 on, he was also known as a partisan of the PAC, and his writings reflected his new positions. In 1963, when a banning order was issued against him, he fled to Swaziland. In 1969 he arrived in the United States, where he remained until 1983, when he returned to South Africa to advise Inkatha in Ulundi, KwaZulu. Throughout his political career and despite his changing affiliations, Ngubane has always stressed the importance of Zulu history to the contemporary black nationalist struggle in South Africa. He has pointed to Dingane as the symbol of this struggle and to Shaka as the father of Zulu nationalism. In the 1940s, while Ngubane was an active member of the ANC Youth League and one of its most prominent ideologues, his preoccupation with Zulu history was part of the Africanism of that period that called for a revival of the Zulu past. Ngubane launched the campaign to rehabilitate Dingane's name when he was editor of Inkundla. He claimed that his efforts were part of a growing awareness of Dingane' s heroism among young Zulu authors.56 Ngubane's description of the killing of Retief and the trekkers had none of Ilanga's apologetic tone of the 1920s and 1930s; instead, he praised Dingane, saying that "he had to choose between independence and slavery, and he chose the former."57 When he presented Shaka as the father of black nationalism, Ngubane was expressing in the late 1940s ideas that are still promulgated by today's Inkatha leaders. His article "Who Are the African Nationalists?" explains the importance of the ANC and its Youth League to African nationalism: African Nationalism is not a mythical spirit with mythical origins. Nor was the creation of the new African People a myth nor with roots in superstitious mysteries. It was the logical and deliberate crystalisation of an historical tendency that had been going on among the African people from the times of Shaka. Divest of its crudeness, the military intention was to create a great united African empire extending as far south and north as possible. Shaka believed in the complete unification of the African people into one mighty nation which would stand independent and on a footing of equality with every human race. 58 Ngubane retained his early views throughout his exile in the United States,

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and he put them into practice once again in the early 1980s when he joined the leadership of Inkatha, which had adopted the same ideas about the Zulu past that he had been preaching. In his Ushaba, which he published while in exile, Ngubane dealt extensively with the encounter between Retief and Dingane and the Battle of Blood River.59 His introduction to this work mentioned the "Zulus' unique conception of their past" and pointed out that the past plays a different role in Zulu society than it does in other cultures. Written in the United States and published in 1974, Ushaba reflects the influence of the civil rights movement of the 1960s as well as Black Power and other militant black movements there. In fact, Ngubane pointed to the importance of the American civil rights movement for the struggle in South Africa. Acknowledging that South African blacks had yet to create their own solutions to their problems, Ngubane nevertheless drew on the black American struggle for ideas. The theme "black is beautiful," for example, became prominent in his later works. 60 This discussion may be easier to understand why at the turn of the century Magema Fuze described Shaka as light brown, while in the late 1960s Ngubane described him as dark black. In addition to reflecting the "black is beautiful" theme of the 1960s United States, this development evinces the return to the early days of Zulu history, when black had also been beautiful. Writing in the 1960s, Raymond Kunene pointed out that "in the pre-Shakan poetry, blackness was an important physical characteristic. The king was referred to as the 'Black One. "'61 It was not only a return to Zulu values and the influence of the American civil rights movement that darkened Shaka over the years but the fact that, for educated Africans, the message of segregation was not one of failure to integrate but of the need to restore lost pride in a separate identity. The form this need took among the Zulu intelligentsia was a focus on pride in Zulu culture. These changes of consciousness account for an important difference between Fuze's version and Ngubane's. Both writers, from their respective Christian points of view, assumed that the birth of Shaka was preordained by divine forces-Fuze "trust[ing] that even a child cutting its first teeth would realise that this was a deed designed for the rapid advent of the owner of this country of South Africa"62 and Ngubane sharing this belief, which links Shaka's birth with destiny. But, in speculating on what might have happened to South Africa if Shaka had not been killed, the two writers disagree completely. Fuze claimed that, had Shaka not been killed, blacks would have learned some of the whites' "product of knowledge," while Ngubane argued that the whites would never have been able to conquer South Africa without first killing Shaka. For Ngubane, Shaka was the father of nationalism in South Africa: Had Shaka not been killed, all South African blacks would have united into one strong force, which could have defeated the whites. Inkatha has

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adopted this image of Shaka to make him a symbol of the nationalist movement.

NOTES 1. For my discussion of the petty bourgeois leadership and of the traditional elite in the 1920s, I rely on S. Marks,"Patriotism, Patriarchy and Purity: Natal and the Politics of Zulu Ethnic Consciousness," in L. Vail, ed., The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (London: James Currey, 1989); S. Marks, The Ambiguities of Dependence in South Africa: Class, Nationalism and the State in Twentieth Century Natal (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1986; and Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); N. L. Cope, "The Zulu Royal Family Under the South African Government, 1910-1933: Solomon KaDinuzulu, Inkatha and Zulu Nationalism," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (University of Natal, Durban, 1985); and T. Couzens, The New African-A Study of the Life and Work of H. I. E. Dhlomo (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1985), pp. 83-85. 2. Rev. Oscroft, report of meeting of Nkata ka Zulu-SAP/v. 41 6/953/23/4, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London. 3. Cope, "The Zulu Royal Family," p. 162. 4. Oscroft, report of meeting of Nkata ka Zulu. 5. Cope, "The Zulu Royal Family," p. 132. 6. Marks, "Patriotism, Patriarchy and Purity," p. 14. 7. llanga Lase Natal, August 12, 1927; October, 28, 1927; and March 23, 1928. 8. llanga Lase Natal, editorial, September 1, 1905. 9. llanga Lase Natal, December 8, 1905. 10. llanga Lase Natal, November 3, 1905. 11. Ilanga Lase Natal, June 3, 1927. 12. Ilanga Lase Natal, April 30, 1909. 13. Ilanga Lase Natal, December 10, 1909. 14. However, a few readers were unhappy with Bryant's evolutionary theory. Ilanga published a letter from one reader who argued that Bryant's ideas ran contrary to the Christian faith, to which the editor added the comment: "We dissociate ourselves with the views of Father Bryant's theory of creation." (Ilanga Lase Natal, December 10, 1909). Darwin's theory of evolution was the object of much discussion during that period, and from time to time !lang a gave space to other letters and articles contesting Social Darwinism. 15. Ilanga Lase Natal, December 15, 1922. 16. Ilanga Lase Natal, editorial, April 16, 1926. On the same subject, see Ilanga Lase Natal, December 18, 1925, and November 20, 1924. 17. Ilanga Lase Natal, December 14, 1928. 18. Ilanga Lase Natal, March 25, 1927. 19. Ilanga Lase Natal, March 23, 1928. 20. Gumede's life story does not differ greatly from that of the petty bourgeois leaders whose ideas were represented in Ilanga. In fact, he had edited the newspaper himself for a time around World War I. After his 1927 trip to the Soviet Union, he praised that nation as the "New Jerusalem" where racial discrimination was unknown. His speeches of this period and his tendency to link the ANC, of which he was president until 1930, with the communists drew many angry reactions from

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Natal. Finally, he had some personal conflicts with Dube, in part over Dube's desire to keep the Natal Native Congress independent of the pan-South African ANC. His ideology and political line became much more militant than the conservative educated elite in Natal could countenance. 21. D.P. Kunene, The Works of Thomas Mofolo-Summaries and Critiques, Occasional Paper No.2 (UCLA: African Studies Center, 1972), p. 25. 22. T. Mofolo, Moeti oa Bochabela (Morija, 1907); Pitseng (Morija, 1910). 23. Introduction by D.P. Kunene toT. Mofolo, Chaka (London: Heinemann, 1981). 24. Mofolo, in response to a letter of criticism in Leselinyana ia Lesotho, February 1927, as quoted by Kunene in his introduction to Mofolo, Chqka. 25. Ibid. 26. Kunene, The Works of Thomas Mofolo, p. 28. 27. Mofolo's works greatly influenced Zulu writers. Another of his novels, The Traveller to the East, influenced R. R. R. Dhlomo to write his An African Tragedy. 28. Marks, The Ambiguities of Dependence, p. 132 (n.18). 29. Cope, "The Zulu Royal Family," pp. 310-320. 30. G. Heaton Nicholls to J. H. Zutphen, May 28, 1929 (MS NIC 2.08.1 Bantu Affairs File 5), as quoted in Cope, "The Zulu Royal Family," p. 327. 31. R. J. Haines, "The Opposition to General J.B.M. Hertzog's Segregation Bills 1925-1936: A Study in Extra Parliamentary Protest," unpublished M.A. thesis (UniversityofNatal,Durban, 1978),pp.167-172. 32. /langa Lase Natal, January 30, 1931, and February 9, 1932. 33. Haines, "The Opposition to General J.B.M. Hertzog's Segregation Bills 1925-1936," p. 173. 34. On the responses of white liberals to the Hertzog bills, see Haines, "The Opposition to General J.B.M. Hertzog's Segregation Bills 1925-1936." See alsoP. B. Rich, "The South African Institute of Race Relations and the Debate on 'Race Relations', 1929-1958," paper given at the Societies of Southern Africa in the 19th and 20th Centuries seminar, October 30, 1980; and his White Power and the Liberal Conscience (Johannesburg and Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1984). 35. S. Marks, "Patriotism, Patriarchy and Purity," p. 17. 36. S. Z. Skikna, "Son of the Sun and Son of the World: The Life and Works of R.R.R. Dhlomo," unpublished M.A. thesis (University of the Witwatersrand, 1984). 37. "The Charter of the Zulu Society," p. 1, pressure group papers, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London. 38. Skikna, "Son of the Sun and Son of the World," p. 98. 39. Inkundla ya Bantu, January 1946. 40. For information on Herbert Dhlomo's life and works, I rely on T. Couzens, The New African; and N. Visser and T. Couzens, H.I.E. DhlomoCollected Works (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1985). 41. Dhlomo's first play, Ntsikana, was never published in his lifetime. The second, The Girl Who Killed to Save, which was the first of his plays to be published, told the story of the 1857 killing of the Xhosa cattle. In it Dhlomo argued that, although the killings caused terrible suffering, in the long run they had a good effect because they smashed tribal society and forced a whole segment of the black population into the modern world. 42. /langa Lase Natal, September 13, 1928. 43. Quoted in Couzens, The New African, p. 129.

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44. H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Why Study Tribal Dramatic Forms?" Transvaal Native Education Quarterly (March 1939), as quoted in Couzens, The New African, p. 152. 45. Although first performed in 1939, Moshoeshoe was written (according to Tim Couzens) in 1937. 46. M. B. Yengwa claimed that the plays were the topic of much discussion among the youth of the ANC and were cultural and political events that left a very strong mark at the time. I have heard a similar view from M. Zondi, professor of Zulu literature at the University of Natal, Durban. 47. For the life of Rolf Dhlomo, I rely on Couzens, The New African, pp. 57-64. 48. Ilanga Lase Natal, Apri19, 1926. 49. Ilanga Lase Natal, December 28, 1923. 50. R. R. R. Dhlomo, uDingane (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter and Shooter, 1936), uShaka (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter and Shooter, 1937), uMpande (1938), uCetshwayo (1953), uDinuzulu (1968). 51. Inkundla ya Bantu, August 1946. 52. E. A. W. Gunner, "Ukuboonga Nezibongo-Zulu Praising and Praises," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (University of London, 1984), p. 16. 53. This idea was suggested to me by M. B. Yengwa on August 15, 1986. 54. T. Karis and G. M. Carter, From Protest to Challenge, vol. 4 (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institute, 1977), pp. 14-115. 55. L. Switzer and D. Switzer, The Black Press in South Africa and Lesotho (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979), p. 43. 56. Inkundla ya Bantu, May (first fortnight) 1946; June (second fortnight) 1946. 57. Inkundla ya Bantu, May (first fortnight) 1946. 58. Inkundla ya Bantu, March 12, 1949. 59. J. Ngubane, Ushaba (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1974). 60. See also J. Ngubane, "Shaka in the Literature of Southern Africa," in D. Burness, ed., Shaka King of the Zulus in African Literature (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1976). 61. R. Kunene, "An Analytic Survey of Zulu Poetry," unpublished M.A. thesis (University of Natal, Durban, 1962), p. 64. He adds, "It is related that when the king wanted a chief wife he usually chose the darkest skin girl in the country." 62. M. M. Fuze, The Black People and Whence They Came: A Zulu View, ed. T. Cope (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press and Killie Campbell Library, 1979), p. 59.

4 SHAKA'S IMAGE: FOUR VIEWS

Was Shaka's skin dark black or light brown? Did Shaka have many wives, or was he a homosexual? Was he cruel and capricious, or was he a kind and generous leader? There are different answers to these questions in the literature, both written and oral. Chapter 5 focuses on oral histories, and this chapter deals with the different images of Shaka in written texts. Until the 1960s, the popular images of Shaka in Zulu and English works had many similarities. The four texts analyzed here illustrate these similarities as well as the growing gap between the narratives written in English and those in Zulu and the developments that these changes reflect. The first text is Rolf Dhlomo's uShaka, published in 1937, which is one of the most widely read novels in the Zulu language. 1 The second is a manuscript by Max Gluckman, "The Rise of the Zulu Empire," written between the late 1950s and the early 1970s. Although it has never been published in full, the text has appeared in periodicals in abridged form and influenced generations of scholars. The third text is Emperor Shaka the Great, an epic by Mazisi Kunene. Written in Zulu, the epic has never been published in its original language, but it was published in 1979 in an English translation by the author.2 The final view of Shaka to be analyzed here is the television series Shaka-Zulu, which was produced between 1984 and 1986 by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). The ten-hour series received government support and is the largest production ever undertaken by broadcasters in South Africa. It was seen by millions of South African and Western viewers and has been the focus of much debate. The authors of all four texts ask the question of why so many wars occurred during Shaka's reign, and all four attempt to answer it. Gluckman argues that Shaka had sadistic tendencies as a result of his Oedipal love for his mother; he is supposed to have developed a love for war alongside a deep need to revenge his mother's miserable life. Dhlomo, too, seeks a psychological explanation for Shaka's cruelty and finds it in Shaka's childhood. His psychological explanation does not, however, employ Freud's concept of the Oedipal complex. Kunene maintains that Shaka fought wars of unity and revolution and sought to tum southern Africa into a single

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nation. Shaka-Zulu achieves somewhat less coherence in its suggestion that "Shaka fought wars in order to keep his army employed." To a certain extent, these four answers to why Shaka was involved in so many wars present in microcosm some of the disagreements about Shaka's personality and his deeds. A comparison of texts of different genres raises certain methodological difficulties. Dhlomo wrote a biographical novel, Gluckman an anthropological text, and Kunene a modem epic, and the television series is structured in the U.S. tradition of the television miniseries. Each genre possesses its own specific conventions; each has its own grammar, rhetoric, and pragmatics; and each targets a different audience with different expectations. Dhlomo's novel was aimed at Zulu Christian converts and pupils. It weaves Zulu oral tradition into a biographical novel with a conventional European structure. Gluckman's study was aimed at the academic community, that is, mainly non-South Africans. In keeping with academic conventions, he used footnotes to document his sources and presented a unitary thesis based on Shaka's biography. Kunene wrote an epic, and as such his text follows the tradition of oral narrative. Kunene claims to have adhered to a central tradition within Zulu oral poetry that emphasizes the centrality of the hero. The series Shaka-Zulu was broadcast in five parts in South Africa and in some Western countries and therefore reached a huge and diverse audience. It was designed to be shown in parts over a few days, so much care was necessarily devoted to maintaining the attention of the audience between episodes. For that purpose, a number of devices are used that influence the structure as well as the content of the film. For example, flashbacks employed to tell the story of the Zulu king create a few recurring points of interest and allow the film to be divided into parts without losing viewers' attention. The following analysis does not ignore important genre conventions that determine the way texts are constructed. However, it suggests that these works can and should be studied together despite their respective locations within very different genres, for these four very different discourses share more than a common theme: They all interpret and lend new images to the social reality in which they were created. The choice of genre, while setting limits on the literary possibilities open to their writers, nevertheless serves to reinforce their respective ideological practices) The different genres are therefore discussed as literary expressions that serve the historical consciousness of the writers using them, while at the same time defining and limiting them. A second obstacle to a full comparison, which cannot be sufficiently dealt with here, is the language difference. Dhlomo and Kunene wrote in Zulu, while Gluckman's manuscript and the SABC film were written in English. Although Kunene translated his epic himself, Dhlomo's novel has

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never been translated for publication. I depend here on an unofficial translation by the late M. B. Yengwa, which was made for this study. Verbalization is very important for conveying meanings, and my reliance on translations necessarily limits the analysis to some extent. Dhlomo's book surely deserves a careful analysis by a Zulu-speaking scholar. Finally, it should be noted that my choice of texts could have been different. Those chosen are important, as I have stated above, because they mark points in the process of a change in the consciousness of South African elites. They are not the only texts that might have been used for this purpose, but two of the four are the most widely read works in their genre. Dhlomo's book uShaka is the best-read book in the Zulu language, and the film Shaka-Zulu has been seen by hundreds of millions of viewers around the world. They were chosen because their role in Zulu history and historiography has not yet been investigated.4

ROLF DHLOMO'S SHAKA

Rolf Dhlomo's novel uShaka was published in 1937 and immediately became a bestseller. Although reprinted in many new editions, it was never published in English.5 uShaka is a biographical novel written in the tradition of that genre and telling the life story of the hero from his birth to his death. It combines information derived from written materials and oral traditions that do not necessarily relate to the Zulu king. Dhlomo's uShaka was one of five historical biographies that he wrote about the Zulu kings.6 He was the first Zulu to write a historical biography, and he was the first to challenge the biographies written by whites or to attempt to represent the Zulu kings through the use of known oral traditions. uShaka and uDingane were written in a period of growing interest in the Zulu past among Zulu intellectuals. In 1930, Rider Haggard's Nada the Lily, an exaggerated and distorted account of Shaka's reign, was translated into Zulu.? John Dube's fictional story of Shaka's personal servant was published shortly thereafter.B Before publishing his novel on Shaka, Dhlomo published a novel about a fictional hero set in the time of the Zulu king.9 Dhlomo's use of the genre of historical biography reflects the need of young Zulu intellectuals to reconstruct a body of national heroes for themselves. His project was conceived at an intellectual turning point for the Zulu intelligentsia. Segregationist ideas were then giving rise to the Hertzog bills and eventually led to the 1936 Land Act. The abolition of the African Cape franchise forced members of the educated elite in Natal to realize that their hopes of assimilation into European society as equals had to be abandoned, at least for the time being. Turning its back on the liberal

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notions of universalism that had disappointed it, the educated elite began searching for its own traditional identity. The process of disillusionment, together with ideas of pan-Africanism, formed the intellectual background for the writing of these biographical novels. Their success as bestsellers further demonstrates that the change in consciousness extended beyond Dhlomo and affected his audience as well. These works were very different from Dhlomo's early writings. In 1928 he had published a novel in English, An African Tragedy, which became a prototype for later Zulu fiction.lO It tells the sentimental story of a country boy who became corrupted by modern life in the big city. This theme reappeared in Dhlomo's journalistic works, underlining his conviction that Christianity provides an essential guide for people living in a time of deteriorating values. An African Tragedy, also a bestseller, was the last of Dhlomo's novels to be written in English. For his later works he preferred Zulu, a linguistic change that coincided with the change of subject in his writings: Christianity and education gradually gave way to the Zulu past. Dhlomo's decision to change the subject and the language of his writing is reflective of his new ideology. By writing about the Zulu kings, he sought to educate his readers, to give them specific heroes with whom they could identify. Indeed, his books were studied by thousands of pupils and contributed immensely to their knowledge of and interest in the Zulu past. Dhlomo's uShaka became the standard history of the Zulu king and is still regarded as the most reliable source by a majority of educated Zulu. 11 Dhlomo's book, although regarded as a Zulu account of the Zulu king, was much influenced by white writings. Growing up in a town, torn from traditional society, his ideas about the Zulu past were mainly drawn from the urban literature of the white colonists. Thus, in his first attempt to seek his own "roots," Dhlomo studied European notions of the Zulu and incorporated many of their images as well as their understanding of the Zulu past into his writing. A tension arises between Dhlomo's Christian convictions, which heavily influenced his writing, and his attempt to portray a traditional king who would be appreciated by his readers. A similar tension between "modern" and "traditional" values characterizes the writings of the entire generation of Zulu intellectuals to which Dhlomo belonged. This tension marks them as writers who were educated in mission schools, who lived in the towns and were torn away from traditional Zulu society, but who looked to their traditional past for consolation in those days of despair and disappointment in white society. Throughout the novel, Dhlomo reveals this conflict in his perception of the Zulu king. He accepts the image of Shaka as portrayed by white writers,

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deploring the king's tyranny and cruelty. Nonetheless, he wants to adopt him as a symbol of Zulu power and as part of his personal heritage. This tension remains unresolved in the book. Rather than challenging the assumptions of previous works by whites, Dhlomo tells the same story in a different form. Shaka's cruelty even grows to new dimensions in this book. Citing a folktale, Dhlomo relates the story of a man who dies of dehydration while attempting to fight the sun. Shaka, who enjoys watching this struggle, laughingly says after his death: It is a pity he died, but he was lucky to die of natural causes as I had intended to kill him. Throw him away outside the fence of the homestead. Go and intercept those people who are going along the pathway and kill them. They will accompany and make a bed for this man who has been killed by the sun. I can see the birds ravenous flying above. I notice that they are hungry.

Shaka's cruelty is explained in terms of God's will as well as in relation to Shaka's miserable childhood, which left him unsociable and for which he sought revenge throughout his adult life. The alleged effect of Shaka's childhood on his later behavior was discussed by writers before Dhlomo and would continue to be discussed by later writers as well, but it was Dhlomo who provided this psychological explanation to thousands of Zulu readers.

Dhlomo's Unique Contributions to the Biography of the Zulu King Dhlomo's most important contribution to the literature on Zulu royalty is his weaving of known folktales into the biography of his hero. This device allows Dhlomo to present his hero to the reader in familiar terms and, simultaneously, to attribute to him the acknowledged superhuman qualities of the hero. For example, in describing Shaka's unpredictable nature, Dhlomo uses two accounts, one illustrating Shaka' s cruelty and the other his good nature. One day, as he was sitting leisured in the cattle enclosure, men heard him saying: "Zulu my people, have you ever known a man who takes snuff, who when he is asked for a pinch of snuff agrees to give others without first professing the lack or insufficiency of it beforehand?" The council of men denied knowledge. "No Ndabezitha. There is no such person. All men begin by declining, by professing the lack of snuff, and then later offer a pinch of snuff if they have enough." Shaka then laughed saying, "I am now going to find out whether this wide world does have a man who is capable of offering a pinch of snuff without professing the lack of it before."

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According to this story, Shaka then sends his messengers to find such a man, but they look throughout the country in vain. Finally, they meet a man who offers them snuff without first saying that he has too little. He is brought to Shaka, who gives him a cow as a reward. This story is only one in a series used for the same purpose. They all allow Shaka to conform to the image of the "typical" Zulu hero, thus fitting him to the tradition of Zulu oral narrative. But Dhlomo also functions as a modem storyteller who is responsible for creating a unified image of the past leader. Unlike traditional poets, he creates an image that is not only influenced by the values and epic motifs of his own society but is also affected by the author's Christian upbringing and Western education. Divided between two worlds, Dhlomo used both European writings and Zulu folktales to reconstruct the story of Shaka, making the book a reflection of the situation of Zulu intellectuals in the late 1930s. It is a mixture of Christianity and romantic nostalgia for life in tribal society, which draws both on white racist ideas about the Zulu king and on known Zulu traditions. Dhlomo relied heavily on the writings of Fynn, Isaacs, and Stuart and, in cases of disagreement, preferred their versions to Zulu traditions. Dhlomo took Isaacs and Fynn as the best sources of information because they knew the Zulu king personally.l2 His use of folk stories lends his work an authentic feel and renders him an indisputably Zulu writer. These stories may also make his work more appealing to his Zulu readers. But, since white sources of information seemed more reliable to him, he ultimately incorporated many racist stereotypes from white literature into his own work. In some cases, the conflict between the author's two sources caused him to express European ethnocentric views even more blatantly than white writers. For example, his version of Shaka's speech before his death provides one of the clearest statements put into the mouth of the dying king: "What wrong have I done Dingane? What have I done Mhlangana? Why do you kill me? Do you hope to rule this land when I am dead? You are very much mistaken, there are the birds of heaven hovering over this land. You shall never rule this land when I am dead. The Europeans have arrived."13 Shaka's alleged prophecy or curse about the swallows that would rule has been explained by many writers as a prediction of the coming of the Europeans, but no previous writer ever had Shaka express this in so straightforward a manner. On the other hand, contrary to most versions, Dhlomo's Shaka is the rightful heir to the throne who has to fight his half-brother, Sijugana, and those trying to help him to become the new king. Although Dhlomo's Shaka wins the throne by killing many others, he is nonetheless a legitimate leader, worthy of admiration. Scholars like Max Gluckman have written articles and books about the competition between various rightful heirs to

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the throne, portraying the contest as an important political institution in Zululand, but Dhlomo presents Shaka as the only rightful heir. All earlier written works describe Shaka's birth as abnormal and thus make him illegitimate, but Dhlomo applies the notion of primogeniture and concludes that Shaka, the firstborn son of the king, is the rightful heir. Later, probably because of the influence of Dhlomo's book, Zulu intellectuals argued that Shaka' s purported illegitimacy was a product of white racist stereotypes and as such another distortion of Zulu history.14 Dhlomo's Shaka is capricious and cruel, and the folktales lend dramatic color to his tyranny, but he is also the legitimate heir and rightful king, a figure to be feared and one worthy of admiration. Aside from this new claim for Shaka's legitimacy, the importance of Dhlomo's novel lies less in its innovations than in its popularity. It summarizes what was by then "common knowledge" among whites and what would later become the Zulu conception of past events. That it was written in Zulu and aimed at a wider audience than the students to whom Stuart's textbooks appealed is the main reason for its popularity. Moreover, the fact that it was issued by a South African publisher based in Pietermaritzburg meant that it was reprinted as editions sold out. The remaining reasons for its popularity, however, relate to more substantive concerns. The author made his hero's life story familiar to readers by weaving folk stories into it. Like oral narrative, Dhlomo's novel is filled with repetitions, and many of the anecdotes about the Zulu king resemble folktales in structure and content. Through the language, the allure of the familiar tales, and the ease with which readers could follow the simple plot, thousands of Zulu readers were enticed into making Shaka's acquaintance. In the English-language texts available up to that time, there was no precedent for Dhlomo's tone of admiration and respect. And even more importantly, Dhlomo showed that the Zulu kings were important not only to country people who relate their tales orally but also to educated Zulu who were used to biographies only of European leaders.

MAX GLUCKMAN AND SHAKA'S SEXUAL PREFERENCES

Max Gluckman advanced two different theses regarding the rise of the Zulu state. The first and better known of the two is a structural explanation of state formation, a theory that Gluckman advanced in 1940 in one of his first articles.15 In the article, Gluckman explained that the Zulu state was formed as part of a wider process that took place in eastern South Africa-a process of state formation triggered by demographic and economic changes. Gluckman's thesis opened an academic debate and marked a tum-

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ing point in Zulu historiography, which had previously focused on the role of the individual leader rather than on structural explanations for the rise of the Zulu empire. In 1960 Gluckman pursued a new direction, expounding a second thesis in which he explained the rise of the Zulu kingdom in terms of the personality of its leader-king, Shaka.l6 Here Gluckman argues that Shaka's homosexuality and disturbed personality are the keys to understanding the major political developments in Zululand.17 I shall examine these two seemingly conflicting theories and see whether they can be explained in terms of a change in interests, ideology, prevailing school of thought, or other influences on the author. I shall study the two interpretations-the "institutional analysis" versus the role of a "great man"-as they appear in Gluckman's published articles by asking two main questions: (1) Why did Gluckman move from his structural-functionalist explanation to a personal one? (2) Why did Gluckman choose this particular personal explanation-reinventing Shaka as a homosexual?

Gluckman's Innovations In 1940 Gluckman published an article, "The Kingdom of the Zulu of South Africa," in African Political Systems, a book that was widely used as a textbook by Africanists and anthropologists. Gluckman's article was innovative in three ways. First, he shifted the focus of study of the Zulu empire from the role of the individual leader to structural explanationsmainly economic-dealing with society as a whole. He argued that the assumption that major social transformation resulted from the work of individuals (Dingiswayo and Shaka) was insufficient. Second, he showed that one should not necessarily seek external factors to explain the major changes that had occurred among the Nguni and that it was not "white knowledge" that had given rise to the Zulu state. Third, Gluckman's work made it possible to view the Zulu kingdom within the broader context of northern Nguniland-in other words, he argued that the rise of the Zulu state could no longer be studied as a unique phenomenon but rather as part of a larger process of state formation in the region. Gluckman's first two innovative arguments-that the rise of the Zulu state could not be attributed to Shaka's personality and that the process involved was not initiated by knowledge from outside-challenged the common wisdom of historians and administrators that had prevailed since the middle of the nineteenth century. Gluckman rejected Shepstone's thesis that Dingiswayo had formed the first modern African army by using knowledge he had gained from working for a white man by pointing to the internal processes that resulted in the process of state formation in the area. Gluckman studied the laws of sue-

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cession before the rise of the Zulu state and argued that these laws account for the manner of settlement and the system of division of land and cattle and also explain the internal wars and relations of the kingdom with neighboring societies. These laws were inherently unclear, and as a result there were constant struggles for power among the Nguni between potential heirs, and these struggles led to division of the tribe into two or more independent units. Gluckman argued that until the mid-seventeenth century, "the political equilibrium consisted of numerous homologous small tribes which constantly fought, often ceremonially, against one another, but which did not extend the sphere of their dominion and were kept small by constant fission."I8 This equilibrium was preserved by a repetition of internal conflicts, the result of the uncertainty about the rules of succession of the leaders, and helped keep communities a controllable size. The balance collapsed when a shortage of land made migration to unoccupied lands impossible and thereby put an end to the process of fission. The resultant excessive population density on the available land gave rise to a process of amalgamation of tribes. In clan histories this trend becomes noticeable about I 775, and for the next thirty years newly formed tribes percolated into unoccupied land between the lands of other tribes, and even ousted possessing tribes. Gradually some tribes were able to dominate their neighbours. From 1808 to 1816 the process was accelerated and several small kingdoms were established.... In this period of emerging kingdoms, the political balance was of dominant tribe against dominant tribe, each struggling for supremacy.l9 In the 1960s others also began to offer alternative explanations for the rise of the Zulu kingdom. According to these new theories, Shaka' s wars were not the mere caprice of a single individual or the result of new techniques borrowed from white men but stemmed from larger structural changes in the area caused by demographic changes, new trade opportunities20 (and internal conflict over the control of trade),21 the 1801-1802 drought,22 and a growing imbalance between cattle density and local resources.23 From the 1950s on, only amateur historians, novelists, and poets retained a fascination for Shaka and Dingiswayo and credited them with creating the empire. Scholars-both liberal and revisionist-used structural, functional, and sometimes Marxist explanations for the rise of the Zulu state. Since Gluckman was influential as a writer of Zulu history and as a principal Africanist anthropologist, he played an important role in forming this liberal historiography-the same historiography that was later criticized as providing the apartheid state with legitimation for racially unequal division of resources. But his work shows that the liberal tradition was

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more diverse than recently suggested. Indeed, Julian Cobbing includes Gluckman in the group of liberal authors in whose writings "whites and blacks are 'pluralistically' treated in separated chapters of books, and where interactions are generally ignored."24 Yet Gluckman's structural explanations of the rise of the Zulu kingdom transformed the discussion of the kingdom's rise from the anecdotal and exotic portrayal of the Zulu and their leaders to the academic explanations of internal factors that gave rise to an African empire.25

A Return to the Individual Leader In 1960, Gluckman published an article in which he suggested that Shaka was a homosexual,26 He argued that Shaka had strong homosexual tendencies within a near-psychotic sadism. Having been mocked as a boy about the small size of his penis, he desired to publicly demonstrate his virility as an adult.27 Gluckman's focus on Shaka's personality tallied with a growing popular literature on the Zulu king. While new academic works were introducing innovative structuralist explanations for the rise of the Zulu kingdom, popular writing about Shaka was becoming increasingly common, and from the mid-1950s on, several novels were written about the psychology of the Zulu king. These works were in the tradition of writings that went back to the works of Bryant in the late 1920s. Bryant had made the connection between Shaka's miserable childhood and his love of war. Using a psychological explanation, he wrote: "Then his [Shaka's] little crinkled ears and the marked stumpiness of a certain organ were ever a source of persistent ridicule among Shaka's companions, and their taunts in this regard so rankled in his breast that he grew up harbouring a deadly hatred against all and everything eLangeni."28 When later writers used psychological tools to explain Shaka's love of war, some connected it, as did Bryant, with sexual inadequacy and others with the general feeling of rejection that Shaka experienced during his childhood.29 In uShaka, Rolf Dhlomo popularized the psychological explanation among Zulu speakers.30 There were two new elements in Gluckman's 1960 article: first, the idea of Shaka's homosexuality, and second, his reintegration of the personal reading of Shaka into the academic debate that was by then focused mostly on structural explanations for the rise of the Zulu state. According to Gluckman, Shaka's homosexuality and his love for his mother explain most of his significant actions. Gluckman proposes that Shaka's homosexuality inspired both his extreme sadism and brutality and his displays of kindness and lavish hospitality and explains why Shaka developed such a rigorous system of organizing his warriors into regiments of coevals, who were quartered for much of the year in barracks near him

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and were forbidden to marry until they were almost middle-aged. The system of regimental age groups existed in neighboring societies as well, but, as is evident in his severe regulation of marriage, Shaka carried the organization of the barracks beyond rational need. As a student of Zulu history, Gluckman first opened a debate about the conditions that led to the rise of the Zulu empire and pointed out that the important process of state formation in Nguniland could not be attributed to a single individual but must rather be traced to demographic and ecological factors. The question is why, twenty years after he offered his structuralist interpretation of the rise of the Zulu kingdom, Gluckman moved to an explanation based on psychoanalytic theory. Furthermore, why did he suggest that Shaka, who was taken to be a cruel and capricious tyrant by some and a genius and important ideologue by others, was a man driven by sexual impulses and drawn to war as a result of his homosexuality? Gluckman tried to answer the first question himself.31 In 1974, a year before his death and thirty-four years after his first publication on the Zulu, Gluckman brought his abiding concerns together in an article titled "The Individual in a Social Framework: The Rise of King Shaka of Zululand."32 This article deals with the role of the leader in shaping events in society, and centers on the conflict between social constraints and the will of the individual.33 Gluckman attempted to formulate a theory that would explain both the social system of the Nguni before and after Shaka's reign and Shaka's role in transforming the Zulu social system. He argued that the political equilibrium that existed among the Nguni between the fifteenth and late eighteenth centuries was disturbed in the early nineteenth century for two main reasons: the demographic one and that of the influence of the personalities of regional leaders. Gluckman claimed that increased population density hampered the processes of fission and division so that political units grew in size. Since there was not enough land to assure the independence of each segment, the stable social system underwent major changes. "Instead of a stable equilibrium-full of conflict and struggle-of many tribes, each liable to split up, and all warring on their neighbours occasionally, there was a short temporary 'equilibrium', highly unstable, in which these strong, well-led, tribes were extending their empires."34 The second factor is the personalities of the leaders, especially the disturbed personality of Shaka, which led him to seek wars and to use the resulting political instability to form his empire. In trying to understand Gluckman's integration of a personal explanation into his earlier very convincing structural one, we can see the general problem of functionalist structuralist theory in explaining major changes. Although Gluckman was critical of functionalist theory, his analysis of the Zulu state is very much a product of that school of thought. When fission and change are explained as functions of stability, when rebellion is institu-

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tionalized and wars of succession maintain the equilibrium, a major transformation is very hard to explain. The demographic explanation did not seem radical enough to account for the sweeping changes that occurred in the early nineteenth century, and Gluckman was looking for an additional one. Most probably, Gluckman was also influenced by E. A. Ritter's bestselling book Shaka-Zulu, which focused on Shaka' s personality as an important factor in the rise of the Zulu state. 35 In Ritter's book, Shaka is described as the warrior who could not marry his beloved girl. Gluckman cited Ritter often, but he did not approve of Ritter's version of the love story between Pampatha and Shaka, to which indeed there is no earlier reference in a written work. That Gluckman revised his thesis to introduce the Zulu leaders as playing a real part in social transformation is understandable, but that does not account for his making Shaka a homosexual. For generations Shaka was portrayed as the stereotypical African leader-a tyrant who ruled without mercy and who had hundreds of wives. Both Isaacs and Fynn describe him as having hundreds of "girls" in his harem.36 Yet, according to Gluckman, Shaka was incapable of normal sexual relationships and had serious doubts about his virility.37 Gluckman simply reversed the stereotype. Basing his argument on little evidence, he symbolically castrated the Zulu king.38 However, this treatment of Shaka had little effect on Zulu historiography. Only scholars who dealt with wider phenomena and who did not specialize in Zulu history were influenced. The best-known examples are Ali Mazrui and E. V. Walter, both of whom developed extensive social and political theories linking sexual inadequacy to terror. Using Gluckman's description of Shaka's homosexuality, they sketched models for understanding terror and tyranny in modern political systems as being derived from the sexual disturbances of the rulers.39 In the historiography of South Africa Gluckman's structural explanations of the rise of the Zulu empire, which focused on internal causes rather than the "knowledge of the white man" and showed that the formation of the Zulu empire was part of a larger process of state formation in the region and not the result of Shaka' s personality, remain his abiding contribution.

MAZISI KUNENE: EMPEROR SHAKA THE GREAT

Kunene's Emperor Shaka the Great represents an important reminder that colonialists, both administrators and historians, could not have invented the past alone and that the reconstruction of the Zulu past has occurred in oral history as well. Kunene introduces the izibongo-traditional Zulu praise poetry-into the anticolonial discourse in order to bring into play not only

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new ideas about the Zulu past and the Zulu king but also new (or rather old) Zulu forms of writing. But the content and form that Kunene develops only help demonstrate the immense problems faced by antiapartheid writers as well as the difficulties experienced by the colonized in attempting to create a new discourse that is detached from the colonial one.

Kunene's Shaka: How Different? The first book written in Zulu, by Magema Fuze, a Zulu missionary at the turn of the century, presents Shaka as a great Zulu leader. In the mid-1970s, Jordan Ngubane, a writer, journalist, and later Inkatha adviser, portrayed Shaka as the first black nationalist. While Fuze's Shaka was light brown, Ngubane's was dark black.40 As discussed in Chapter 3, the reason behind Shaka's darkening over the years may be found in the changes in the consciousness of the Zulu intelligentsia between the turn of the century, when Fuze wrote his book, and the 1970s, when Ngubane, a Zulu nationalist, wrote his. Kunene's epic is part of this tradition of creating a new image for Shaka, transforming him from a cruel tyrant to a brilliant leader, from a Zulu king to a pan-Africanist black nationalist, and from light brown to dark black. Kunene's book also represents the most systematic attempt to create an entirely new image for Shaka because Kunene portrays him as an important ideologue as well as one of the first black nationalists. According to Kunene, Shaka, the national hero, is the ideal leader in Zulu terms, and his qualities are those that are much admired by the Zulu. Years before, in his master's thesis, Kunene had written about the importance of blackness for the Zulu: "In the pre-Shakan poetry, blackness was an important physical characteristic. The king was referred to as the 'black one' .... It was related that when the king wanted a chief wife he usually chose the darkest skinned girl in the country." Thus, the reliance on Zulu values, together with the rise of black consciousness ideology and the influence of the American civil rights movement, combined to darken Shaka over the years. The idea that Shaka was not only a Zulu leader but a black nationalist who envisioned a united African empire in southern Africa was first suggested by Jordan Ngubane in the 1960s and was later adopted as Inkatha's official view.4 1 Kunene, a political exile who has been an active member of the ANC, developed this notion into a complex and detailed thesis and used it as the principal force driving the hero of his epic. His Shaka is a decisive leader whose life is devoted to fulfilling his vision. Zulu foreign policy, the wars, Shaka's new regimental arrangement of the army, and his personal life are all explained ideologically as consisting of two main components: the need to unite different peoples into one nation; and social equality, or the equal distribution of resources within the empire.

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According to Kunene, it was Shaka's faith in nationalism that caused him to involve his army in so many wars. He was not interested merely in conquest but was determined to integrate the conquered peoples into his empire and into a growing nation. To promote unity, he abolished much of the traditional leaders' authority and appointed new leaders who were loyal to him and to the central government. He also initiated the celebration of national holidays to promote unity, and he used the army as a melting pot for soldiers from different tribes, who would dissolve their various ethnic identities into new generations of Zulu through living together in the barracks and fighting together in the field. Shaka's vision of a just society, based on an equal distribution of resources and social equality, led him to begin allocating positions of command based on merit rather than family affiliation or national origin-a policy that caused great discontent within the traditional aristocracy who were thereby displaced. He also undermined the traditional basis of military privilege when he became a member of the army himself and instituted a system in which commander and soldier, aristocrat and commoner all had to take similar risks on the front line. This approach, together with Shaka's distribution of plunder among the soldiers, caused such resentment on the part of the aristocracy that his brothers would later conspire to assassinate him in order to regain their former privileges. Where E. A. Ritter, Max Gluckman, and Rolf Dhlomo use Shaka's psychological dilemmas to explain the military and political activities of the king, Kunene sets aside the psychology of his hero and views his policies merely as a function of ideological interests.42 In Kunene's version, Shaka's personal dilemmas derive from his need to set an example as a leader. Kunene therefore systematically uses ideological terms to explain Shaka's behavior and sometimes offers novel interpretations of important historical events. Yet, although Kunene's Shaka is unique in his ideological motivations, this work still relies on colonial notions of the Zulu king. There are at least three areas in which Kunene and the "biased" writers whom he sought to challenge share the same discourse. First, they tend to see early Zulu history as a product of one man, the "good" or "bad," the "genius" or "capricious" Shaka. Second, they generally compare blacks and whites when writing Zulu history. And third, they address the same questions, even though their answers are different.

New Answers to Old Questions Although Kunene's Shaka receives a new image that renders his personality both more comprehensible and more nuanced, the story of Shaka remains that of a leader whose biography is taken as explanation for major

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political and sociological processes. When the epic was written, academic research on early-nineteenth-century history in South Africa already suggested that the rise of the Zulu empire was not a unique phenomenon but part of a larger process of state formation in the area. Kunene hints that he is aware of this research in the short introduction to his book. Yet, by choosing to write in a "traditional" Zulu epic form, he necessarily chose to focus on the centrality of his hero and to describe the rise and expansion of the Zulu kingdom in terms of Shaka's personality. Thus, while colonial literature sought the cause of the Zulu wars in Shaka' s psychological dilemmas, Kunene relates the wars of expansion to Shaka's personal ideology and beliefs. His Shaka is a decisive leader, one whose life is devoted to the fulfillment of his vision. Kunene also cites ideology as the reason for Shaka's refusal to have children. He portrays the Zulu leader as a man who sacrifices his desire for love and children because sexual abstinence is a pressing need for a society in a revolutionary period.43 Thus Shaka becomes a martyr who subordinated his personal interests to his people's quest for identity. In most versions of Shaka's life story, the king orders the execution of any woman who becomes pregnant by him. In some versions, a woman in Shaka's harem succeeds in concealing her pregnancy and gives birth to a child, who is then hidden out of fear of Shaka's rage. But the Zulu king finds the child and kills him. In Kunene's epic, Shaka is told that a child of his by a "Cele girl" is being hidden from him by his own mother, Nandi. Deeply saddened, Shaka travels to his mother's royal city, where she is waiting for him, and says to her: Mother, many times I have endured great pains But never have I faced so great a challenge. The one closest to me has betrayed me! Mbopha tells me you harbour what shall be the death of our house. A child, supposedly mine, has been kept away from me; Yet I am still convinced never could my parent act against me. What example would I be setting for the army? What wise general would ask of his men what he himself would not do?

When he asks Nandi how he has wronged her, she calmly replies: Shaka, my son, no one is gifted in all things. You have many types of knowledge and experiences But only one aspect still remains obscure to you: The heart that yearns to fulfill its dreams and fantasies. It is not out of evil that people act against others, But love sometimes obscures itself in acts of cruelty. The older I get the greater are my concerns. Thus by my own love I am weakened.

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Rejecting Nandi's loving arguments, Shaka explains the importance of laws "beyond the circumstance of self' and tells her again that he must set an example for his soldiers.44 Compared to previous psychological reconstructions, Kunene's insistence on an ideological explanation for Shaka' s refusal to have children is intriguing because it is the first explanation of this nature. However, of even more interest is Kunene's failure to question the idea that Shaka refused to have children or whether he really killed his hidden son. Instead, he repeats the story as if it were "true," arguing merely that it requires a different explanation. In doing so, he participates in the polarized ideological discourse between blacks and whites, in which the life story of Shaka becomes a medium for white projections and black rejections. In other words, Kunene does not establish terms for a new perspective on the life story of Shaka or, more generally, on Zulu history. Using the same limited terrain suggested by white writers, Kunene merely provides new justifications for his hero. Nor does he address the relevance of the individual's biography in explaining historical phenomena as important as the rise of the Zulu state. In the late 1970s, when the emergence of the Zulu state was seen by researchers as part of a structural process of state formation, why revert to the question of why Shaka refused to have children?

Kunene and the Traditional Role of the Epic Despite these omissions, Kunene's epic poem is exceptional in both content and form. He provided a new focus on what he claimed was Shaka's ideology, whereas most previous writers had described events in terms of the king's psychological dilemmas. Kunene's form is innovative because he attempts to reestablish the izibongo, traditional Zulu praise poetry. Arguing that the modern poet, like the traditional one, has an important political role to play, Kunene states explicitly that he chose the epic form to suit his ideological interests. Explaining the process of politicization that Zulu poetry underwent in the Shakan era, he writes: From largely personal and romantic literature of the pre-Shakan period, Zulu literature changed to become a powerful vehicle of social and political ideas. The heroic epic was developed, the language-form changing in the process to express dramatic national events. Needless to say, this process of literary change had begun to be perceptible in the literature of the later pre-Shakan period. However, in the Shakan period, it reached the point of fullest expression. Nursery rhymes, satires and songs were all exploited for the social purpose of mobilizing the nation. The poet and the singer became central figures in Zulu society. They defined social values, celebrating what was historically significant and acting as democratic agents to reaffirm the approval or disapproval of the whole nation. 45

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In choosing the traditional epic form, Kunene assumes the role of the traditional poet, whom he terms "a democratic agent" in his society. This choice indicates that his awareness of the political importance of his work was explicit. However, Kunene seems to be trying to do the impossible: Aware of the political implications of his epic, he nonetheless entangles himself in the very debate he attempts to abandon. Indeed, rather than taking a place in the tradition of the Zulu izibongo, Emperor Shaka the Great belongs to the literature of the response of blacks to white distortions of their history. In his introduction, Kunene admits that "correcting" the errors in Zulu history is one of his main aims, and throughout the book he continues to argue against positions taken by white South Africans. This position renders his work a product-albeit a critical one-of colonial literature. Kunene's Shaka compares Zulu culture to the culture of the whites, arguing over and over again that in many respects Zulu culture is superior to white culture. Moreover, he expresses pity for whites and despises them for their cowardice and lack of intelligence.46 George Lukacs, analyzing the relationships among society, the individual, and the literary text, focuses on the social and ideological function of genre. He explains that the epic provides a narrative that is complete and meaningful in itself, without any tension between what was and what should be. The narrative strategy of the epic describes a homogeneous world that is innocent of normative fragmentation. In choosing the epic form, Kunene purports to assume the role of the traditional praise poem singer, but he ignores some of the contradictions inherent in his choice. No elements of criticism, ironic deployment, or even parody are present in his work because it is an ideological manifesto. He uses Shaka' s ideology to show that precolonial African states were more progressive than whites claim. What is right for black nationalist ideology now, Kunene suggests, was already evident to Shaka. But by using his epic as an ideological tool, Kunene not only forfeits the possibility of irony and nuance that the secondary literary epic provides but also misconstrues the function of the traditional praise poem singer. Written about a leader who died 150 years earlier, Kunene's epic has very different political implications than the izibongo in the long tradition he claims to join. In the Shakan era, the bards played a dual role of expressing the rulers' ideology to the people and the people's criticism to the rulers.47 Writing so long after his hero lived, and writing in exile a work that was first published in a foreign language (English), Kunene fails to serve the epic's traditional purposes because his work lacks any element of popular criticism. Although Kunene attempts to break out of the trap of colonial discourse through the work's unique aesthetics and its innovative view of Zulu

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history, the epic nevertheless underlines the difficulties of writers who strive to create an alternative discourse. Written within the framework of colonial discourse, Kunene's epic is a courageous attempt to tum Shaka into a symbol of black nationalism rather than Zulu chauvinism. However, with the extensive use of Shaka's name in Inkatha propaganda today, it seems as if Kunene's effort and similar ones are doomed to failure. The struggle over symbols is an important one that should not be underestimated. The colonial heritage such efforts set out to question, and by which they are influenced, is an important factor in the South African past that can be fought but not erased.

SHAKA-ZULU: THE SOUTH AFRICAN

BROADCASTING CORPORATION

Shaka 's life was originally recorded by white historians who imposed upon their accounts bigoted and sensationalist valuesoften labeling the Zulus as savage and barbaric. It is our intention with this series to change that view. -William C. Foure, Director48

The television series Shaka-Zulu was produced by the SABC between 1984 and 1986. This ten-hour miniseries received government funding and remains the biggest production ever undertaken by broadcasters in South Africa. It has been seen by millions of South Africans and Western viewers and has been the focus of much debate. The film focuses on the life story of King Shaka, who is portrayed as a bloodthirsty tyrant and a barbaric megalomaniac obsessed by an Oedipal need for revenge. In it, Shaka is not subjected to any social contract whatsoever, and his will is executed without question by all of his subjects. The SABC film biography of Shaka offers two distinct and complementary explanations for the Zulu king's tyranny and his love of war and killing. First, he is seeking revenge for the horrors of his childhood, and second, he is simply in the service of the forces of evil. In the quest for revenge for the contempt he and his beloved mother suffered throughout his childhood, Shaka launches an era of wars that transform southern Africa. He goes to war "to keep his army busy"; if there were no wars, he says, he would have to create them. He invents a new weapon because he is dissatisfied with the arms used previously: They caused hardly any deaths but served merely as devices to determine who was the stronger of two combatants. In revolutionizing military tactics, Shaka introduces for the first time wars aimed not at subjugation but at total destruction.

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Shaka-Zulu's second explanation for Shaka's horrifying behavior is that he is possessed by evil spirits, symbolized by the image of Sitayi, the monstrous witch doctor, who controls Shaka's life. Sitayi saved the life of Shaka's mother when Sitayi was pregnant with him, and she accompanies him throughout his life, saving him from death and guiding his course. But her curse is what causes his death. As the series develops, we learn that the birth of Shaka was predicted by a curse allegedly known to all the Zulu people. In the world of the series, the chain of causation in Zululand works in accordance with unknown or unexplained forces. These supernatural powers, which control the lives of individuals, are stronger than any other forces. Although the script strongly suggests that many people had an interest in Shaka's death, in the end his assassination by his brother Dingane is seen as the result of Sitayi' s curse. Indeed, the series ends with the words of her curse echoing loud and clear, as the dying Shaka manages to utter two final sentences: "You too my brother?" he asks in a crude imitation of the dying Julius Caesar. Then, with his mouth full of blood, he cries, "The Swallows have won." These words link Shaka's death to a victory by the whites. We are expected to believe that his last words, like the other prophecies in the series, will come true. 49 There can be no doubt about the meaning of Shaka's last words because whites are called swallows throughout the film. By this means, the scriptwriters conveniently solve the old puzzle of the identity of the swallows that Shaka is said to have mentioned as he died.

Black, White, and Colors in Shaka-Zulu There are two heroes in Shaka-Zulu: Lieutenant Farewell and King Shaka. The comparison between the two, the lines of conflict and cooperation between black and white leaders, lies at the center of the series-which is not about Shaka per se but about the meeting of the two cultures represented by the heroes. As the brochure describing the series put it: Two men of strength and courage ... two men unwilling to bow to the other's will, but anxious to use their opponent in the quest for superiority. Shaka-an unbeaten warrior, leader of the mighty Zulu empire. Farewell-agent of the King ... and western civilization. Two forces locked in a struggle whose outcome will decide the fate of Africa and the people of the world. The result of their struggle can still be felt today. 50 The camera work stresses the comparison, with sharp cuts from scenes of Farewell in his colonial surroundings to Shaka in his court. Apparently, the two men shared the same hobby. We witness each of them in long scenes in the bath, but Farewell washes his body with water, while Shaka is smeared with grease. In general, the overt or implied comparisons are not flattering

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to Shaka. Farewell is depicted as determined to do what he feels is just. We are told what his motives are, and he is seen consulting with his fellows and consenting to the will of the majority even when it runs contrary to his own views. Shaka, on the other hand, is shown as driven by caprice, his motives at best obscure. He is a tyrant who demands that his will be obeyed by all his subjects, and he does not listen even to his best friend and counselor. When the personal lives of Shaka and Farewell are contrasted, it is again to the disadvantage of the Zulu king. Both men regard their duties as more important than their personal lives. Farewell leaves a loving wife for his mission to Zululand, and Shaka declines the love of Pampatha, refusing her offer to give him an heir. While Farewell explains his motives to his wife and expresses sorrow at his departure, Shaka states cryptically that "a man who builds a road to heaven must travel alone." To make the contrast even sharper, the director transfers the viewer from a horrible scene in which Shaka kills his son and punishes the disobedient mother to the romantic parting of Farewell and his wife. Shaka and his beloved are seen in the darkness of a hut, in a dark yellow light, with a musical background that adds to the atmosphere of horror and fright. Farewell and his wife take leave of each other under the blue skies of the Cape.S 1 The comparison is, in fact, between two different cultures-and their differences are stressed throughout the series. As in the contrast between Shaka and Farewell, the director uses film methods such as camera filters and music to sharpen the contrast between the life of whites in the Cape and that of the Zulu. A dark filter makes most of shots of the kraals and the interior of huts appear in shades of yellow, red, and brown, supposedly to reflect firelight. These warm colors are starkly contrasted with the chilling blues of thunder, rain, and lightning that occur with the appearance of the witch doctors. In contrast to this alternation between warm and chilling colors, shots of the white areas are filmed in "realistic" and seemingly "natural" colors. It never seems to rain in Cape Town, and the light is neither an emotional yellowish brown nor a chilled blue. 52 Indeed, Cape Town and the young Port Natal seem to suit the view of the colonies as depicted by the British king. "What do the colonies represent to us?" the king asks Lord Bathurst. "Sunshine," was the answer. Zululand is the problem. Like its stormy weather, its people are hot tempered and unpredictable. In group shots, the Zulu are almost invariably seen dancing, singing, and shouting. The use of thousands of extras in these shots makes it appear as if the Zulu always move together in hundreds. Only royalty is ever seen individually and thereby distinguished from the common people, who are portrayed as passive masses acting in blind accordance to their ruler's will. The scenes of hundreds of screaming Zulu shot through the yellow filter, the clouds of smoke from fog machines, and the buckets of shiny sweat all

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tend to obscure detail and to mesh people into one pulsating faceless mass. In the Cape we never see a crowd. The confrontation between the two heroes and the two cultures they represent conveys the message that whites have their "superior weaponsyears of civilization"53 and blacks only the power of numbers-and their love of war. This message is expressed clearly and directly by the colonists, so one can only conclude that one of the series' aims was to confirm their claims. The series was supposedly based on the diary of Henry Francis Fynn, a point that is reinforced throughout the series by scenes showing Fynn writing his notes. His voice, which accompanies these scenes, has the quality of the narrator in a documentary film. In other words, he is the "objective" observer. Thus, the viewer learns about Zulu history and culture through the narration of a white traveler who is allegedly sharing his knowledgeable and neutral observations. The series presents Fynn as a reliable narrator by portraying him as a doctor who consented to join the voyage to dark Africa only because he wanted to put an end to the suffering of Africans at the hands of Shaka. But Fynn's own suggestion of his motives, as written in his diary, is quite different: "Farewell at this time made proposals to me about joining his party, representing, as he had done to his partners, the immense profits which would be derived from the speculation."54 In fact, Fynn was not a doctor but a trader who journeyed to a land that he believed was rich in ivory. The series also adapts Farewell's motives for going to Port Natal to its overriding interests. In Shaka-Zulu Farewell is said to have undertaken his mission to Zululand at the behest of the Colonial Office. However, one gains a very different picture from Fynn's diary and Farewell's letters. Farewell invested a huge sum in the expedition because he believed that Shaka owned all the ivory procured at Delagoa Bay.ss Fynn wrote: When Farewell learnt that our voyage to Delagoa Bay had been successful he formed the opinion that the Delagonians procured their ivory from a people more powerful than themselves and concluded, from what he had seen and heard at Port Natal, it must be the Zooloes. He inferred from this that a settlement founded at Port Natal would succeed in drawing the ivory intended for the Delagoa market. 56

In addition to distorting the motives of the travelers, the series ignores all previous visits by Europeans to Port Natal, although its writers could not have been unaware of these trips since Fynn himself described some of them. Nonetheless, the series claims to capture the "historical moment" when whites reached Port Natal for the first time. Moreover, the scriptwriters also invent the assistance that the Zulu are shown receiving from whites

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in their war against the Ndwandwe-their strongest enemies. Nor is there any basis in historical fact for the scenes in which Shaka is shown giving Farewell a tract of land out of gratitude for the life-saving medical treatment "Doctor" Fynn is supposed to have provided. It would be too tedious to detail all the inaccuracies and inventions in Shaka-Zulu. Some of the distortions may have resulted from artistic decisions or attempts to create more dramatic effects. A voyage to an unknown land on an important secret mission is more romantic than a journey of traders to a port that has been seen many times before. An eccentric and handsome lieutenant and a humanitarian doctor make better heroes than a former naval officer and an adventurer looking for easy profits. But not all the inventions can be explained in terms of artistic decisions. In the series, the arrival of the whites leads to most of the developments in Zululand in the 1820s. Shaka's association with the whites enrages the witch doctors, whose position is threatened by Western medicine, and Sitayi curses him for it. Thus, the whites are shown as responsible for the decline in the power of the witch doctors, for Shaka's disagreements with his prime minister, and eventually for Shaka's death.57 Indeed, the witch doctors are portrayed as the main religious agents in Zululand; their beliefs are presented in stark contrast to the tenets of Christianity and the grace of Christ. They are depicted as monsters and seem to represent pure evil. Shown in the darkness of the night, their appearance is accompanied by storms and lightning. No wonder they fear the whites, whose religion seems so much more seductive than the one they represent. In every action of the whites, the contrast with the behavior of the blacks is emphasized. This clash of religious systems is, of course, only the particular area chosen by the filmmakers as symbolic of a comprehensive clash of values.

Why Produce Shaka-Zulu in South Africa in 1986? No expense was spared in the making of this $24 million epic . ... Magnificent Zulu "kraals" were constructed on the top and sides of mountains. Roads had to be built to sites which were previously thought inaccessible. ... These magnificent sets were constructed by more than 200 hut builders who were responsible for the framework and thatching of the "kraals". It took more than two years for Zulu tribesmen to provide the raw materials necessary to construct the authentically built huts-which included the weaving of hundreds of feet of grass rope, fabricating grass walls for the structures and the collection of tons of grass to thatch the hut roofs. -SABC brochure58

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Why was so much effort and money allocated to a television series about the life of a Zulu leader? Why did the director see it as an important task to bring the story of this great leader to the world so that it would, as SABC claimed, "take its place in world history"? In what ways did the series serve the apartheid regime? What ideological and political messages does it convey? In a parliamentary debate held in May 1984, R. P. Meyer stated that Shaka-Zulu was aimed at helping the South African government improve its international image.s9 Indeed, an extensive advertising campaign was launched in the United States before the series was shown there. Harmony and Gold, the series' distributor, deliberately concealed the involvement of the South African government and the SABC in financing and supporting the production. 60 This campaign was aimed at undermining the cultural boycott of South Africa. Selling the series as an international production, an epic about a great black leader, some TV stations reportedly planned to air Shaka-Zulu to coincide with the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., or Black History Month.61 Although set in early-nineteenth-century Natal and Zululand, the television series makes a clear political statement about the South Africa of the 1980s. Superficially a tribute to King Shaka, founder of the Zulu empire, it in fact corresponds to the apartheid regime's policy of separate development. The series shows the Zulu as a distinct and powerful people whose identity should be preserved, thereby defending the Bantustan policy. Through the series' racist images, the culture of the Zulu is shown as inferior to that of the whites, thereby nullifying the possibility of creating a unified state. When economic sanctions against South Africa were being debated in the West, the South African government became highly sensitive about its image abroad. Buthelezi, who is frequently called "the moderate Zulu leader," spent a great deal of time in the West, challenging the economic boycott and calling on outside investors to help black South Africans by investing money in the country. He is frequently depicted as a representative of the "largest African tribe" in South Africa. Promoting the importance of the Zulu in a television series therefore amounts to an international promotion of his cause, so it is not surprising that both King Goodwill Zwelithini, the current Zulu king, and KwaZulu prime minister Buthelezi expressed full support for the production. It is ironic that Buthelezi, who speaks often about white historians who have distorted Zulu history, gave his blessing to a film made without the input of any black African historians. He often blames whites for misunderstanding the genius of Shaka and for portraying him as a bloodthirsty tyrant instead of a great leader, yet this series depicts Shaka in a worse light than any other previous work. This contradiction can only be explained in terms of political interests.

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Apparently the KwaZulu leaders believed they would benefit from a film that presented them as the representatives of the largest group of people in southern Africa and that accepting the racist portrayal of their people was therefore politically worthwhile. Offices of the ANC in the West denounced Shaka-Zulu as propaganda by the apartheid regime. Mazisi Kunene, who was then the ANC representative for Europe and the United States and who wrote Emperor Shaka the Great, summarized his views in a newspaper interview: "If this were an honest effort, it would be laudable, but, instead, it corresponds to old colonial attitudes. It's like Hitler doing the history of the Jews."62 As I have pointed out, most of the distortions in Shaka-Zulu serve ideological and political interests rather than the artistic taste of the producers. In this regard, the scriptwriters' most interesting invention is the Cape colonists' fear of a Zulu invasion. This supposed fear, which is not supported by any historical documentation, constitutes a central theme of the series. The colonial officers are sure of their superior weapons, yet they prefer to have their superiority acknowledged by the Zulu without resorting to arms. Here the message of the film is spelled out explicitly: Although blacks outnumber whites in South Africa, whites are more powerful. Instead of proving their power in a bloody war, whites should convince blacks of their superiority and reach some kind of agreement with them. What kind of agreement this should be is, indeed, the central question posed by the series. But I would suggest that, instead of offering a single answer to this question, Shaka-Zulu presents several sometimes conflicting views. It details each alternative but leaves the viewer to consider the possible outcomes. One possibility is Farewell's solution: a peace treaty recognizing the unity of Zulu civilization and the power of the Zulu king. This solution probably best suited the leadership of KwaZulu when the series was made. For years, Buthelezi attempted to unite all the Zulu, whether in KwaZulu or in the towns, behind Zulu traditional leadership and to present himself and his movement as the sole representative of the Zulu people in order to establish himself as Shaka's heir. Like Shaka, he was stretching out a hand for peace. The presentation of the Zulu kingdom as a united constituency where all inhabitants are loyal subjects to the king thus served the interests of Chief Buthelezi and Inkatha. By ignoring the divisions within Zululand in the 1820s, the producers promoted the interests of Buthelezi, who, like Shaka, does not represent a monolithic nation. The series ties its picture of unity to the total loyalty and passivity of the common people. Shaka is a tyrant whose will is ultimate in the kingdom. In a discussion with Fynn of free will and the right to live, Shaka is shown explaining that he owns that will as well as the lives of his people. Farewell's plea that the Zulu offer of friendship be accepted is not the

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only outcome that the series suggests as possible or even necessary. As the Zulu delegation presents its offer of peace to the governor, the latter is told that the Zulu army is heading south to attack the Cape. Shaka is depicted as an unreliable ally whose hot temper makes him unpredictable, for the king breaks his promise to Farewell to wait for the delegation to return before he engages his army in war. The ensuing order to march on the Cape becomes the last in a long list of horrors that Shaka has perpetrated since the death of his beloved mother. He also orders his people to cease cultivating the land and milking cows and to abstain from sexual behavior during a year of mourning. The scenes of horror on the screen conform to other familiar versions of Shaka' s madness as a result of the loss of his mother. More generally, Zulu norms, culture, and religion are depicted throughout the series as inferior to those of the whites. The film suggests that the two value systems are incompatible and cannot be assimilated to each other. Thus, while the series purportedly portrays a mission to reach an agreement on the terms of peace between the Zulu and the colonists-a resolution that is seen as necessary and desirable from the white point of view-it also depicts the Zulu leadership in a manner that bodes ill for success. When the white hero says, "The Zulu people are reaching out a hand for friendship," he is referring to the Zulu of the 1980s as much as to the Zulu of the 1820s. The message is that the offer should be considered, yet the king who makes this offer is portrayed as intrinsically unreliable. It may be that this incoherence in the series' messages reflects the confused and ambivalent stance of whites to coexistence with blacks. In the film, Farewell says, "No matter how well you can play, you can't always control the game entirely." This statement recalls P. W. Botha's understanding that the white minority is not playing the game alone in South Africa, and it brings to mind his famous 1979 slogan: "Adapt or die." But Botha never made clear what kind of adaptation he thought would be acceptable for blacks that would still keep his system alive. Likewise, while the series suggests that the whites should reach some kind of agreement with the blacks, it does not specify what kind of agreement would be acceptable to both. Near the end of Shaka-Zulu, Farewell comes to Shaka to discuss the king's intention of attacking the Cape. The Zulu king poses a question to the white colonialist: How does one trap a monkey? Farewell answers that one must use something shiny for bait; then the monkey's "greed makes him blind": Shaka: What is he greedy for? Farewell: What he thinks he cannot have. Shaka: And what new bait have you brought here? Let this monkey see something shiny.

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