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Recapturing Captives and Conversations with ‘Cannibals’: In Pursuit of a Neglected Stratum in South African History

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 36; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03057071003607295

1465-3893

Peter Delius,

Global Maritime and Colonial Histories

Abstract The central argument of this article is that the role of captives in African society has been neglected despite there being sufficient evidence to explore the issue in some depth. This omission has limited our understanding of important dimensions of the historical experiences of women and children, and of vital power dynamics in decisive phases of social transformation. This perspective also allows for a re-analysis of the ‘cannibal narratives’, which have thus far proved to be a tantalising yet intractable form of evidence. The article concludes by suggesting that the silences within oral traditions, Africanist sensibilities, structuralist approaches to slavery, and the particular form of the ‘mfecane’ debate have all contributed to the failure to engage with this topic effectively. Notes 1 Potentially troublesome adult males were rarely taken captive and those who survived attacks were left to reconstruct their lives along with infants, the old and the sick who were equally unwanted. * This article has grown out of my involvement with the NRF-funded 500 Year Initiative. The research for this article was made possible by the grant provided for that project, and by the Anderson-Capelli Fund. My thanks also go to Inge Kosch for assistance with the translation of German texts, and to William Beinart and Philip Bonner for helpful comments on an earlier draft and for valuable suggestions of additional sources. The usual disclaimers apply. 2 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London, Victor Gollancz, 1963), p. 12. 3 Harries, however, has both noted the failure to explore the issue of internal slavery in southern Africa and provided important insights into the forms of slavery that existed within Nguni society. See P. Harries, ‘Slavery Amongst the Gaza Nguni: Its Changing Shape and Function and Its Relationship to Other Forms of Exploitation’, in J.B. Peires (ed.), Before and After Shaka: Papers in Nguni History (Grahamstown, Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1981), pp. 210–29. 4 I. Kopytoff and S. Miers, ‘Introduction: African “Slavery” as an Institution of Marginality’, in S. Miers and I. Kopytoff (eds), Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), pp. 3–81. 5 I. Kopytoff and S. Miers, ‘Introduction: African “Slavery” as an Institution of Marginality’, in S. Miers and I. Kopytoff (eds), Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), p. 33; P.E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 11–22; J. Iliffe, Africans: The History of a Continent (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 1–3; E. Isichei, A History of African Societies to 1870 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 78–100. 6 H.A. Stayt, The Bavenda (London, Oxford University Press, 1931), p. 71. 7 H.O. Mönnig, The Pedi (Pretoria, J.L van Shaik, 1967), p. 293. 8 Rev. E. Mothubatse, interviewed by P. Delius, Sekhukhuneland, 1976. 9 J. and J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume One: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 164. 10 J.B. Peires, The House of Phalo: A History of the Xhosa People in the Days of Their Independence (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1981), p. 66. 11 J.B. Peires, The House of Phalo: A History of the Xhosa People in the Days of Their Independence (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1981), pp. 138, 248, n. 30. 12 Mönnig, The Pedi, p. 293. 13 Mothubatse Interview. 14 Stayt, The Bavenda, p. 71. 15 P. Delius, The Land Belongs To Us: The Pedi Polity, the Boers and the British in the Nineteenth-Century Transvaal (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1983), p. 50. 16 I. Schapera, The Tswana (London, International African Insitute, 1953), pp. 28, 37; T. Tlou, ‘Servility and Political Control: Botlhanka Among the BaTawana of Northwestern Botswana, ca. 1750–1906’, in Miers and Kopytoff (eds), Slavery in Africa, pp. 368–90; Comaroffs, Of Revelation and Revolution, pp. 164–5; B. Morton, ‘Servitude, Slave Trading, and Slavery in the Kalahari’, in E.A. Eldredge and F. Morton (eds), Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labour on the Dutch Frontier (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1994), pp. 215–50. 17 A focus on trade through Delagoa Bay and up the Zambezi Valley may have diverted attention from the investigation of important trade routes that connected to the coast at Inhambane and elsewhere. There is certainly suggestive material which supports this view, for example: A. Smith ‘Delagoa Bay and the Trade of South-Eastern Africa’, in R. Gray and D. Birmingham (eds), Pre-Colonial African Trade: Essays on Trade in Central and Eastern Africa before 1900 (London, Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 280–9; A.K. Smith, ‘The Indian Ocean Zone’, in D. Birmingham and P.M. Martin (eds), History of Central Africa, Volume One (London, Longman, 1983), pp. 226–9; H.T. Wangemann, Lebensbilder Aus Süd-Afrika (Berlin, Evangelische Missionsgeselleschäft, 1876), p. 97; D.R. Hunt, ‘An Account of the Bapedi’, Bantu Studies, 5, 4 (1931), pp. 280–5; Mothubatse Interview; J.A. Winter, ‘The Tradition of Ra'lolo’, South African Journal of Science, 9 (1912), pp. 89–91; H.O. Mönnig, ‘The Baroka Ba Nkwana’, African Studies, 22, 2 (1963), pp. 170–1; Mönnig, The Pedi, pp. 19–22; Unisa Archives, Hesse Collection, Tagebuch A. Nachtigal (typed transcript), 28 May 1869. 18 Etherington, however, has helped keep key issues alive. See N. Etherington, The Great Treks: The Transformation of Southern Africa, 1815–1854 (Harlow, Longman, 2001), pp. 330–3. 20 E.A. Eldredge, ‘Delagoa Bay and the Hinterland in the Early Nineteenth Century: Politics, Trade, Slaves, and Slave Raiding’, in Eldredge and Morton (eds), Slavery in South Africa, p. 145. 19 Reflected in L. Thompson, A History of South Africa (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1990), p. 81. 21 Harries, ‘Slavery’, pp. 220–1. Harries draws heavily on Bryant and Kuper. See also C. Hamilton, ‘Ideology, Oral Traditions and the Struggle for Power in the Early Zulu Kingdom’ (MA thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1985), p. 379. 22 Harries,‘ Slavery’, p. 221. 23 R.K. Rasmussen, Migrant Kingdom: Mzilikazi's Ndebele in South Africa (London, Rex Collings, 1978), pp. 23–6, 90–4. 24 J.R.D. Cobbing, ‘The Ndebele under the Khumalos, 1820–1896’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Lancaster, 1976), p. 32. 25 Delius, The Land Belongs To Us, pp. 136–47. 26 Cobbing, ‘The Ndebele’, p. 32, quoting A.T. Bryant, Olden Times in Zululand and Natal (London, Longmans, 1929), p. 425. 27 Bryant, Olden Times, p. 425. 28 Rasmussen, Migrant Kingdom, p. 53. 29 R. Moffat, Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa (New York, Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1969; orig. 1842), p. 555. 31 Cobbing, ‘The Ndebele’, p. 53. 30 Rasmussen, Migrant Kingdom, p. 53. 32 T. Arbousset and F. Daumas, Narrative of an Exploratory Tour to the North-east of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Town, Struik, 1968), p. 187. 33 See Hamilton, ‘Ideology’, pp. 330–80, for an insightful account of the amabutho system under Shaka as an instrument of socialisation and identity formation. It does, however, beg the question of whether the rather measured transition that she depicts from non-combatant boys to fighting adults does not owe rather more to the influence of contemporary military norms than to historical practice in a context of considerable pressure to expand fighting power and to intensify new allegiances. 34 J. Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 62–4. 35 M. Meredith, The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence (London, Free Press, 2005), pp. 563–4, 594. 36 Arbousset and Daumas, Narrative of an Exploratory Tour, p. 186. 37 For example, Harries, ‘Slavery’, pp. 215–23; and L. Vail, ‘The Making of the “Dead North”: A Study of Ngoni Rule in Northern Malawi, c. 1855–1907’, in Peires (ed.), Before and After Shaka, pp. 237–52. 38 For a good example of this approach, see Eldredge and Morton (eds), Slavery in South Africa, chapters 1, 7 and 10. 39 An explanation for this lacuna in the literature is offered below. 40 P. Bonner, Kings Commoners and Concessionaires: The Evolution and Dissolution of the Nineteenth-Century Swazi State (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1983), pp. 80–4, 90–2. It is of course much easier to pose these questions than to answer them – especially given the paucity of evidence. 41 Delius, The Land Belongs To Us, pp. 137–8; J.C.A. Boeyens, ‘“Black Ivory”: The Indenture System and Slavery in Zoutpansberg, 1848–1869’, in Eldredge and Morton (eds), Slavery in South Africa, pp. 199–200. 42 Boeyens, ‘“Black Ivory”’, pp. 199–200. 43 Moffat, Missionary Labours, pp. 547–9. 44 Moffat, Missionary Labours, p. 549. 45 Moffat, Missionary Labours, pp. 549–50. 46 For fuller discussion of these settlements and their history, see P. Delius and M.H. Schoeman, ‘Revisiting Bokoni: Populating the Stone Ruins of the Mpumalanga Escarpment’, in N. Swanepoel, A. Esterhuysen and P. Bonner (eds), Five Hundred Years Rediscovered: Southern African Precedents and Prospects (Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2008), pp. 135–68. 47 Delius, The Land Belongs To Us, pp. 22–5. 48 Delius, The Land Belongs To Us, p. 24. 49 A. Kirkaldy, Capturing the Soul: The Vhavenda and the Missionaries, 1870–1900 (Pretoria, Protea Book House, 2005), pp. 222–49, 270–4. 50 Wangemann, Lebensbilder, pp. 93–5. 52 Wangemann, Lebensbilder, pp. 103–6. 51 This is almost certainly the same individual described as Malesako above. BMS texts were far from consistent in the spellings of individuals' names. 53 Wangemann, Lebensbilder, pp. 109–12. 54 Wangemann, Lebensbilder, p. 121. 55 Iliffe, Africans, p. 134. 56 A. Portelli, ‘What Makes Oral History Different’, in R. Perks and A. Thomson (eds), The Oral History Reader (London, Routledge, 1998), p. 67 (emphasis original). I am indebted to Michelle Hay for drawing my attention to this quotation. 58 H.T. Wangemann, Maléo en Sekoekoeni (Cape Town, Van Riebeeck Society, 1957; orig. Berlin, 1868, in German), p. 70. 57 A. van Jaarsevld, ‘Die Kopa van Maleo en die Blankes in Transvaal, 1845–1864’, South African Historical Journal, 18, 1 (1986), p. 156. 59 Delius, The Land Belongs To Us, p. 246. 60 Berlin Missionary Society Archives, Abt. 3, Fach 4/8, Tagebuch, Lydenburg, 15 July 1876. 61 Berlin Missionary Society Archives, Abt. 3, Fach 4/8, Tagebuch, Lydenburg,15 and 16 October 1876. 62 Berlin Missionary Society Archives, Abt. 3, Fach 4/8, Tagebuch, Lydenburg, 27 November 1876. 63 Berlin Missionary Society Archives, Abt. 3, Fach 4/8, Tagebuch, Lydenburg, 13 December 1876. 65 C. Neale, Writing ‘Independent’ History: African Historiography, 1960–1980 (Westport, Greenwood Press, 1986), p. 17. 64 J.D. Omer-Cooper, The Zulu Aftermath: A Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Bantu Africa (London, Longman, 1966), pp. 5–6. 66 For example, S. Trapido, ‘Aspects in the Transition from Slavery to Serfdom: The South African Republic, 1842–1902’, Collected Seminar Papers on the Societies of Southern Africa in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Vol. 6 (London, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 1976), pp. 24–31; P. Delius and S. Trapido ‘Inboekselings and Oorlams: The Creation and Transformation of a Servile Class’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 8, 2 (April 1982), pp. 214–42; Bonner, Kings, Commoners and Concessionaires, pp. 80–4, 90–2. 67 C. Hamilton, ‘Introduction’, and E.A. Eldredge, ‘Sources of Conflict in Southern Africa c. 1800–1830: The ‘Mfecane’ Reconsidered’, in C. Hamilton (ed.), The Mfecane Aftermath: Reconstructive Debates in Southern African History (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 1995), pp. 1–12, 123–62; Eldredge, ‘Delagoa Bay’.