The South Africa Reader: History, Culture, Politics
624
The South Africa Reader: History, Culture, Politics
624eBook
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780822377450 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 12/10/2013 |
| Series: | The World Readers |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 624 |
| Sales rank: | 609,549 |
| File size: | 19 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Clifton Crais is Professor of History and Director of African Studies at Emory University. He is the author of Poverty, War and Violence in South Africa; Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography (with Pamela Scully); and The Politics of Evil: Magic, Power and the Political Imagination in South Africa.
Thomas V. McClendon is Professor of History at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. He is the author of White Chief, Black Lords: Shepstone and the Colonial State in Natal, South Africa, 1845–1878 and Genders and Generations Apart: Labor Tenants and Customary Law in Segregation-Era South Africa, 1920s to 1940s.
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THE SOUTH AFRICA READER
HISTORY, CULTURE, POLITICS
By Clifton Crais, Thomas V. McClendon
Duke University Press
Copyright © 2014 Duke University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-5529-8
CHAPTER 1
African Worlds, African Voices
Determining when South African history "began" has long been a controversial subject in the country's public culture. Until about fifty years ago, nearly all white South Africans rejected the idea that indigenous peoples had a history. They believed that South African history began with European settlement in the seventeenth century. The popular term Bushman, typically used by colonists to describe hunter-gatherers, suggested a people without culture or history, people who lived in nature. One definition for Hottentot, another racial epithet referring to pastoralist peoples of the Cape, means to "become or live as a person without civilization or culture." The words defining people profoundly shaped South Africa's history. They remain important to how people understand themselves and others, and the terms have broader ramifications, ranging from the organization of museum displays to land rights and the outcomes of elections.
Before about two thousand years ago, people in southern Africa lived in small communities and survived by hunting and gathering. They spoke what is today known as Khoesan, a family of languages that foreigners found distinctive because of its "clicks." Linguists speculate that human language may have begun in southern Africa, and that Khoesan is humanity's most ancient extant tongue. Hunter-gatherers left exquisite rock paintings depicting the world around them as well as magical creatures and trance dancing. In some areas, rock painting continued well into the nineteenth century. These paintings eventually became a way of telling the history of colonial conquest and settlement.
Much of our knowledge of the distant past rests on the work of archaeologists. They have documented the development and spread of cattle and sheep rearing from what is today Botswana. By about two thousand years ago, herding had spread into the southwestern Cape. The communities that herding supported are associated with the Khoekhoe, though people typically had multiple ways of referring to themselves and others. Herders shared with hunter-gatherers the same general language and cosmology. In the colonial era, independent hunting and herding communities disappeared as the result of violence and disease; most of their descendants were absorbed into the Coloured population.
In the eastern and generally less arid parts of South Africa, people lived by farming sorghums and millets and herding cattle. The spread of these forms of livelihood is associated with peoples who spoke Bantu languages. Many also practiced iron making, so that archaeologists use the terms early and late Iron Age to depict these technological developments. Farming had spread south of the Limpopo River by the third century of the Common Era, roughly eighteen hundred years ago. By about 1300 ce, farmers reached the southernmost limits of agriculture, due to rainfall patterns, in the area near the contemporary city of East London. People living in these communities typically traced descent through the male line and organized political life around hereditary chiefs.
Colonial rule, and particularly apartheid, rested on the assumption that people existed as discrete racial and tribal groups. One was black or white, a Zulu or an Afrikaner. In fact, the South African past is marked by heterogeneity and cultural diversity. Most societies, for example, were multilinguistic. Communities frequently had people from various backgrounds, including outsiders. The Xhosa language owes its clicks to interaction with the neighboring Khoesan herders and hunter-gatherers. Bantu-speaking men often married Khoesan women. As agriculturalists, they recognized hunter-gatherers as the "original people" and depended on their ritual knowledge for ensuring plentiful rains.
In a country so profoundly shaped by race and ethnicity, the politics and history of identity remain fraught topics. South Africans have yet to develop ways of discussing their pasts that do not rest on racial and ethnic stereotypes. There is the temptation to see ancient histories in contemporary ethnic identities and political institutions, smoothing away or in some cases erasing far more complicated histories. South African society remains rife with racial and ethnic tension. Claims to the past using group identities had, and continue to have, material consequences, including the distribution of state resources.
The selections that follow invite the reader into this difficult and contested terrain. The readings are not statements of how things "were." In each case, the powerful invention of ethnicity that unfolded across South Africa during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which we cover in part III of the Reader, shaped the author's understanding of the world. They are cultural texts about identity and worldviews. In these stories we learn of Khoesan beliefs and colonial oppression; Nguni ideas about God, ancestors, and the early history of the Zulu Kingdom; and African intellectuals interpreting South Africa's rich oral traditions for a new generation.
"A Story Is Like the Wind" and "The Sun Is Thrown into the Sky"
//Kabbo
Little is known about //Kabbo, which means "dream" in the Khoesan language. He was likely born in the late 1810s on the flat arid lands of the Northern Cape near the small city of Upington. Wild game was depleted and his family was starving, so //Kabbo turned his hunter's prowess to a white settler's sheep. Arrested with other so-called Bushmen rustlers, //Kabbo spent part of his sentence at Breakwater Station prison in Cape Town, an area now developed into the trendy Waterfront district. Released in 1871, //Kabbo moved to The Hill, the home of Wilhelm Bleek in the Cape Town suburb of Mowbray. A remarkable German linguist, Bleek served as the curator of a rich ethnographic collection in the South African Public Library. Over the course of more than two decades, Bleek and his sister-in-law, Lucy Lloyd, interviewed, translated, and transcribed the stories and collected the pictorial representations of people often represented as the Bushmen or the San (//Xam). The archive they produced is the single most important source of information on the San, most of whose communities were subjugated over the course of the eighteenth century. Many San were simply hunted down and shot. Others, particularly children, became laborers on white farms. Only a few semi-independent San existed by the late nineteenth century, including //Kabbo's people in the Northern Cape.
In "A Story Is Like the Wind," //Kabbo recounts his capture and prison experience and his longing for home. He describes the beginning of the world in "The Sun Is Thrown into the Sky." These are among South Africa's earliest recorded African stories.
A Story Is Like the Wind
My wife was there, I was there, my son was there; my son's wife was there, carrying a little child on her back; my daughter was there, also carrying a little child; and my daughter's husband was there. We were like this in number.... The ... African policemen took us when we were like this, while we were not numerous....
I was eating a springbok [a small antelope] when [the policeman] took me; he bound my arms. My son and I, together with my daughter's husband, were put into the wagon while the wagon stood still. We went away, bound, to the magistrate. We who were in the wagon ran along swiftly upon the road while our wives walked along upon their feet. We ran, leaving them; we altogether ran, leaving them behind.
We went to talk with the magistrate.... We had to put our legs into the stocks; another white man laid a piece of wood upon our legs. We slept, stretched out in the stocks. The day broke, while our legs were in the stocks. Early, we took our legs out of the stocks to eat meat; then we again put our legs into the stocks; we sat, while our legs were in the stocks. We lay down, we slept, while our legs were inside the stocks....
The magistrate came to take our legs out of the stocks, because he wished that we might sit comfortably while we ate; for it was his sheep that we were eating. The Korannas [also prisoners] came to join us. They also came to put their legs into the stocks; they slept while their legs were in the stocks.... We left that place and went to Victoria [Victoria West, seat of the local magistracy]. On the way, we ate sheep. Our wives ate their sheep on the way too, as they came with us to Victoria. We came to Victoria to roll stones, as we worked on the road. We lifted stones with our chests. We rolled great stones. We carried earth with a big handbarrow that needed many Bushmen to lift it. We loaded the wagon with earth and we pushed it. Other people—Bushmen people—walked along with us. We were pushing the wagon's wheels; we were pushing. We poured the earth down and we pushed it back....
We again had our arms bound to the wagon chain; we walked along to Beaufort, fastened to the wagon, under the hot sun. Our arms were set free on the road. We got tobacco from the magistrate; we smoked it in a pipe of sheep's bones as we went along. We came into Beaufort jail. The rain fell upon us while we were there. Early the next morning, our arms were made fast and we were bound again. We splashed into the water; we splashed, passing through the water in the riverbed. We walked upon the road. We walked, following behind the wagon until, still bound, we came to the Breakwater [a prison in Cape Town]....
I sit waiting for the moon to turn back for me, so that I may return to my place; so that I may listen to all the people's stories when I visit them, ... stories from their own place and other places too. These are the stories which they tell while the sun grows warm. I want to return to my place so that I may sit in the warm sun listening to the stories which come from a distance.... I shall get hold of a story from yonder, because the stories float out from a distance, while the sun is a little warm. I feel that I must visit there, so that I can talk with my fellow men.... My fellow men are those who listen to stories which float along from afar; they listen to stories from other places. But I am here; I do not obtain stories because I do not visit, I do not hear the stories which float along. I feel that the people of another place are here; they do not possess my stories. They do not talk my language....
I am waiting for the moon to turn back for me, so that I may set my feet forward on the path. I only await the moon; then, I will tell my Master that this is the time when I should be sitting among my fellow men, those who walking meet their like. I ought to visit; I ought to talk with my fellow men; for I work here together with women; I do not talk with them, for they merely send me to work.
I must first sit a little, cooling my arms so that the fatigue may go out of them. I must merely sit and listen, watching for a story that I want to hear, waiting for it to float into my ear. Those are the people's stories to which I will listen with all my ears, while I sit silent. I must wait, listening behind me along the road, where my name floats; my three names ( Jantje, /Uhi-ddoro and //Kabbo) float behind me along the road to my place. I will go and sit down there and, listening, I will turn my ears backwards to where my feet's heels have stepped, and wait for a story to travel to me along the road. For a story is like the wind. It is wont to float along to another place. In this way, our names pass through to the people of that place, even though they do not perceive our bodies going along. For our names are those which, floating, reach a different place....
[//Kabbo] only awaits the return of the moon. He waits for the moon to go around, so that he may return home, so that he may examine the water pits, those at which he drank. He will work, putting the old hut in order, gathering his children together, so that they may work, putting the water in order for him; for he went away, leaving the place, while strangers were those who walked there....
And so I must sit waiting for the Sundays to pass that I remain here, on which I continue to teach you. I will not wait again for another moon; for this moon is the one about which I told you.... I desire that it should do as I have said and return for me. For I have sat waiting for the promised boots, that I must put on to walk in, which are strong for the road. For the sun will go along above me, burning strongly. And the earth will become hot, while I am still only halfway. I must go together with the warm sun, while the ground is hot. For a little road it is not; it is a great road and it is long. I should reach my place when the trees are dry.... I shall walk there, letting the flowers become dry while I still follow the path....
The Sun Is Thrown into the Sky
The First Bushmen, the men of the Early Race[,] ... were those who first inhabited the earth. Their children were the ones who worked with the Sun. The people who came later say that it was those children who made the Sun ascend, for their mothers had told them that they should throw the Sun-person up into the sky, so that he might warm the earth for them; so that they might sit in the Sun and feel its warmth. Until that time, the Sun was a man who lived on earth. In the beginning, he gave forth brightness only in the space around his own dwelling. The rest of the country remained very cloudy, as it looks now when the Sun is behind thick clouds. The sky was dark and black. The shining came from one of the Sun's armpits, as he lay asleep with his arm lifted up. When he put down his arm, darkness fell everywhere; when he lifted his arm up again, it was as if day had come. In the day, the Sun's light used to be white, but at night, it was red, like a fire.
The children of the Early Race gently approached the Sun-armpit to lift him up while he lay sleeping. Their mothers had spoken to them and told them to do this. An old woman was the one who had instructed them. She herself had no young male children, so she spoke to the children's mothers. For she saw that these were clever children, who would understand nicely what to do when they went to that old man, Sun-armpit. The old woman spoke to the children through their mothers, telling them to tell their children that they should throw the Sun-armpit up into the sky, so that the Bushman rice [a gathered food source] might become dry for them. So that while the Sun moved along across the whole sky, it would make all places bright. This is what the mothers said:
"O children! You must wait till the Sun-armpit lies down to sleep. Then, you must gently approach him while he lies asleep. Take hold of him all together, and lift him up so that you can throw him into the sky."
This is what the old woman had told the mothers to say to their children. The children came and the children went away again. The old woman said:
"You must sit down and wait. You must look to see whether the Sun's eyes are still open or whether he sleeps. You must go and sit down and wait for him to fall asleep."
And so the children sat down and waited, as they had been told to do. The Sun lay down; he lifted up his elbow. His armpit shone upon the ground as he lay sleeping. The children took hold of him and threw him up into the sky the way they had been instructed to do. The old woman had said:
"O children going yonder! You must talk to the Sun when you throw him up. You must tell him that he must altogether become the Sun, so that he can go forward as the proper Sun—the Sun which is hot, which stays hot in the sky as he moves along high above us; so that as his heat shines down, the Bushman rice can become dry."
This was the old woman's message to the children, the old woman whose head was white. And so, when the time was right, the children arose and stealthily approached the Sun. They all took hold of him together and lifted him up while he was still hot and threw him up into the sky.
Then the children returned to their mothers. One of them said: "I and my younger brothers and their friends and their friends' brothers all took hold of him. I told them: 'You must grasp him firmly—grasp the old man firmly, and throw him up.'"
Another youth spoke and said: "O my grandmother! We threw the Sun up, we told him that he should properly become the Sun, which is hot, for we are cold. We said: 'O my grandfather Sun-armpit! Remain in your place in the sky. Become the sun that is hot, so that the Bushman rice may dry for us. Make the whole earth light, give heat, so that the whole earth may become warm in the summer. Shine properly, taking away the darkness; you must come, so that the darkness will go away.'"
And so it is thus. The Sun comes, and the darkness goes away; the Sun sets [and] the darkness returns and the Moon comes out. The day breaks, the Sun comes out again and the darkness goes away as the Sun moves across the sky. At night, the Moon comes out to brighten the darkness; the darkness departs. The Moon shines, making bright the darkness as it goes along. The Moon sets; the Sun follows it, driving away the darkness. The Sun takes away the Moon. As the Moon stands in the sky, the Sun pierces it with the Sun's knife, and the Moon decays away because of what the Sun does with its stabbing rays. Therefore, the Moon pleads with the Sun, saying: "O Sun! Leave for my children at least the backbone!"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THE SOUTH AFRICA READER by Clifton Crais, Thomas V. McClendon. Copyright © 2014 Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission of Duke University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
A Note on Style xiAcknowledgments xiii
Abbreviations xv
Introduction 1
I. African Worlds, African Voices 9
II. Colonial Settlement, Slavery, and Peonage 33
III. Frontiers 87
IV. All That Glitters 123
V. United and Divided 197
VI. Apartheid and the Struggle for Freedom 279
VII. From Soweto to Liberation 357
VIII. Transitions and Reconiliations 473
Glossary 583
Suggestions for Further Reading 585
Acknowledgment of Copyrights and Sources 591
Index 599
What People are Saying About This
"This incredibly thorough volume reveals the complex history of South Africa. Through compelling first-person narratives, fiction, and other historical accounts, The South Africa Reader offers a picture of a complicated and often confounding country that is a study in 'trauma and resilience.' It grapples with the legacy of the past in ways that can help present and future generations build a more promising tomorrow."
"Clifton Crais and Thomas V. McClendon have put together a fascinating and informative book. From the earliest voices of colonial times through the struggle against apartheid and current efforts to find a genuinely democratic, nonracial, diverse identity, the voices are here: the colonizers and the despoilers, the powerful and the powerless, the dissenters and the resisters, the determined and the courageous, the destroyers of hope and the dreamers of dreams. South Africans cannot but recognize themselves. This is a book to study, reference, and return to again and again."
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