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SUNDAY TRIBUNE AUGUST 3 2008
Past & present Zulu evolution
Just what does it mean to be Zulu? A group of historians put the history and culture of the Zulu people under the spotlight and came up with some interesting views, as Myrtle Ryan discovers.
ONE of the many thought provoking issues that appear inZulu Identities is written by Prof John Wright, senior research associate in history at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg, who contributed Revisiting the Stereotype of Shaka’s “Devastations”.
Wright said this had been written in the early 1990s and he has since updated his subject matter.
“We have moved on to more sophisticated thinking, which shows the evidence of Shaka as a destroyer was heavily exaggerated,” he said.
Wright believes that not only white colonialists but also black people fed this myth. He said there was much upheaval in the country in the 1820s and 1830s, with complex interactions between African and colonial societies.
“The Orange River was a very unstable frontier. Men – Boers, Griqua and Kora – with guns on horses were sweeping vast distances into the interior, looking for cattle and slaves. This was long before Shaka’s time, but already they were destabilising the interior,” said Wright.
A similar situation was unfolding around Delagoa Bay – the result of an expanding international ivory trade – where African societies were also trying to get a slice of the action.
The ripple effect of all this instability culminated in the 1820s and 1830s with a major wave of new African states emerging: Zulu, Swazi, Ndebele, Sotho, Pedi, and the huge Gaza state in southern Mozambique, said Wright.
This political revolution meant people were being ruled by jumped-up rulers, many of whom had been minor chiefs. As a result, many people were driven out or ran away from their homelands.
Different names were bandied about with regard to the causes of this political upheaval and by 1840 one major one remained – Shaka – probably because the Zulu state was the one that remained standing and strong amid all the change.
“Dingane (Shaka’s half-brother) was a bigger raider than Shaka, but there were no written records, and over time history was embroidered and Shaka was described as this despotic raider by both blacks and whites,” Wright said.
Senior researcher at the Killie Campbell Collections in Durban, Mxolisi Mchunu contributed A Modern Coming of Age: Zulu Manhood, Domestic Work and the “Kitchen Suit”.
Interestingly, Mchunu – who is doing a dissertation on political violence in the 1980s for his doctorate – sees his days as a humble gardener as his “initiation to manhood”.
He likens it to a modern rites of passage. “In Shaka’s time they became men by being inducted into the regiments. I became a man through employment,” he said.
Mchunu said the topic for his contribution to the book presented itself during a debate with a colleague over how whites had treated their domestic workers.
He does not believe his elderly white Afrikaans employer intentionally treated him badly. It was simply the system. During the violence when many black families were driven from their homes, this employer had taken him and his mother into her home.
The Sunday Tribune also chatted to Sifiso Ndlovu about his contribution, A Reassessment of Women’s Power in the Zulu Kingdom.
Speaking from Pretoria, Ndlovu said he had looked at the legendary Princess Mkabayi, King Shaka’s aunt – the real power behind both Shaka’s throne and that of King Senzangakhona.
Although born and schooled in Soweto, Ndlovu said he had garnered knowledge of, and grown to love, Zulu history and culture while attending the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Women, he said, were often wrongly stereotyped.
Ndlovu said, “The man may be the head of the household, but think about it, who do we go through when we want something our father does not approve of? Our mother, hoping she will change his mind. And often she does.”
At the same time, though, women were soon aware if they were being manipulated and would inform their children in no uncertain terms when they were encroaching on a no-go area.
They also often relayed the father’s decision for him. “Your father was not pleased,” being a typical example of how women would relay the bad news, relieving the head of the household of unpopular decisions.
Outside of the family home, those who moulded the youth were the primary school teachers. “If I think back, all of them were women. We had male teachers only in our secondary schools,” Ndlovu said.
His life had turned full circle on getting his doctorate, he said, for it was then that he really took stock of the influence of teachers.
“I want to pay homage to them. They were the ones who nurtured me and introduced me to the world,” said Ndlovu.
Provocative, contentious, intriguing
A NEW book looks at the legacies of Shaka, the wars, the intrigues of Zulu royalty – but from a different point of view. He asks how history has had an impact on the modern Zulu nation, and contemplates the future of Zulu identity.
Zulu Identities: Being Zulu, Past and Present, edited by Benedict Carton, John Laband and Jabulani Sithole, highlights the debates in contemporary South Africa over the manipulation of Zulu heritage, whether for party political purposes or as a means of promoting battlefield tourism.
The editors are “big guns” in their own right.
Carton is an associate professor of history at George Mason University, Virginia, USA, and author of Blood from Your Children: The Colonial Origins of Generational Conflict.
Laband is professor of history at Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, Canada, and has written extensively on the history of the Zulu kingdom; and Sithole is a lecturer in historical studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
The book brings together a veritable impi of sometimes contentious and provocative analyses by more than 50 historians and specialists in their field.
Across the pages march stereotypical accounts of Shaka’s “devastations”, and myths surrounding the powerful king propagated by whites; the rise and fall of the Zulu kingdom; a reassessment of the power of women; the colonial origin of the myth of African barbarism; the role of the missionaries; the politics of Zulu cultural revival; masculinity, class and cultural identity in 20th century black soccer.
There is information about issues as diverse as Chief Albert Luthuli (above right, standing with John Dube, left) and Bantustan politics; Inkatha and the Boy Scout movement; medicine, madness, witchcraft and tradition; martial Zuluness on the East Rand; struggles over Zulu nationalist heritage sites; ceremonial beerpots; Zulu bead language and the headrest (isigqiki), right; Isicathamiya singers; how to be a marriageable girl; tourism; restitution rights on the eastern shores of Lake St Lucia; virginity testing; HIV/Aids; Zulu men as providers within marriage; Zulu manhood and domestic work; “Are Zulu children allowed to ask questions?”; the Zulu warrior ethic and the spirit of capitalism.
One of the authors, W D Hammond-Tooke, a professor of anthropology at Wits University, who wrote on cattle symbolism in Zulu culture, did not live to see his contribution in the book.
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