The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa "nsd0e5409"

7— Patriotism, Patriarchy and Purity: Natal and the Politics of Zulu Ethnic Consciousness1

1. I am grateful to Richard Rathbone and Heather Hughes for their comments on an earlier draft of this essay, and to Leroy Vail for his exemplary patience and editorial skill.

2. 13-19 Sept. 1985.

3. Broadcast on the BBC, 28 Sept. 1985.

4. M.O. Sutcliffe and P.A. Wellings, Attitudes and Living Conditions in Inanda: The Context for Unrest (Built Environment Support Group, University of Natal, Durban, November 1985), pp. 2-4.

5. Ibid., pp.3-4.

4. M.O. Sutcliffe and P.A. Wellings, Attitudes and Living Conditions in Inanda: The Context for Unrest (Built Environment Support Group, University of Natal, Durban, November 1985), pp. 2-4.

5. Ibid., pp.3-4.

6. For a brilliant satire on this propensity among whites, see Anthony Delius, The Day Natal Took Off (Cape Town, 1963); Tom Sharpe's equally biting Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure (London, 1971 and 1972) are also based on Natal's separatist traditions.

7. Helen Bradford, "The Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union in the South African countryside', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, 1985, pp.285-6.

8. Under four million Zulu live in Natal-Zululand and are thus more directly available for ethnic mobilization.

9. B. Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Harmondsworth, 1967), pp.485-6.

10. S. Marks, 'Natal, the Zulu royal family and the ideology of segregation'. Journal of Southern African Studies, 4 (1978), pp.190-3; see also N.L.G. Cope's important thesis, 'The Zulu royal family under the South African government, 1910-1933', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Natal, Durban, 1986, which covers much of the same ground in far greater detail. Unfortunately this was only presented after this paper was written.

11. See Marks, 'Natal, the Zulu royal family and the ideology of segregation'.

12. For the wider pattern of heightened militancy and the reasons for it, see S. Marks and S. Trapido, "The politics of race, class and nationalism in twentieth century South Africa', in the book of that title edited by Marks and Trapido (London, 1986). break

13. Killie Campbell Library (KCL), Durban, South Africa. Ms. Nic.2.08.1 KCM 3348, Heaton Nicholls to J.H. van Zutphen, 28 May 1929. Cf. also UG 48, Native Affairs Commission, 1936, p.6, where it is argued that

the alternative of turning the Native into a lower class of the population must result, not only in the engulfing of the ethnos of the Bantu race in a black proletariat with loss of every vestige of independence and communal brotherhood, which is the greatest birthright of the Native people, but also, and inevitably, it will result in class war—a war waged between sections of the community of unequal strength and power in which the proletariat and the bourgeoisie can be easily distinguished from each other by the colour of their skin.

Quoted in M. Legassick, 'Race, industrialization and social change in South Africa: the case of R.F.A. Hoernlé', African Affairs, 299 (1976), p.236.

Cf. also Ms. 2.08.1 KCM 3362c, R.F.A. Hoernlé to Heaton Nicholls, 26 July 1937: A few weeks ago I read an article of yours contributed to the South African supplement of the Daily Telegraph . I was very much interested in your presentation there of the case for trusteeship and especially in two of your phrases, viz. 'Bantu Nation vrs Bantu Proletariat' and 'Paramountcy of Native interests in Native area'. Speaking for myself I am willing to back any policy which aims at the realisation of these objectives, and if that is the direction in which you and your colleagues on the (Native Affairs] Commissions are working, more power to your elbow.

14. Cf. KCL. Ms. Nic.2.08.1 KCM 3362d, carbon copy fragments of a letter, addressee and date unknown, but probably 1930-31:

The policy of a Bantu nation as distinct from that of a black proletariat—and that stripped of all verbiage, that is the real issue in Africa—obviously brings in its train a pride of race. The most race proud man I know is Solomon [(kaDinizulu), son and heir of the last Zulu king]. He glories in his race and its past prowess; and there is no native in the Union who is so earnestly desirous of maintaining Bantu purity.

The use of the term 'race purity' is somewhat ironic in view of Solomon's known promiscuity and the fact that at this very time many of his wives were suffering from venereal disease, having been infected by Solomon himself. See R. Reyner, Zulu Woman (New York, 1948).

15. See A. Luthuli, Let My People Go (London, 1962), pp.37-8. Luthuli's involvement with the Zulu Society and the paramountcy was quite intense until 1945, and he depended on its support for his election to the Native Representative Council. By the end of 1945, however, he had become disillusioned with the conservative character of the Society. See Note 45 below.

16. Natal Archives, Pietermaritzburg. Papers of the Zulu Society (ZS). ZS III/7, Mpanza to the President, 28 March 1937. Nicholls was widely regarded as the United Party's next Minister for Native Affairs, but his pro-imperial stance and anti-Afrikaner sentiments foreclosed this possibility.

17. The literature on the connections between industrialization and segregation is now considerable, and it owes much to three unpublished papers by Martin Legassick in the early 1970s. It has been developed most recently in a comparative context by John W. Cell, Segregation. The Highest Stage of White Supremacy (Cambridge, 1982). See also M. Lacey, Working for Boroko (Johannesburg, 1982). Some of the connections may be glimpsed in the explicit statements by Heaton Nicholls in Notes 13 and 14 above.

18. For events in the Natal countryside, see Bradford, 'The Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union', passim; idem, 'Mass movements and the petty bourgeoisie: the social origins of ICU leadership, 1924-1929', Jouroal African History, 25, 3 (1984); and idem, 'Lynch Law and labourers: the ICU in Umvoti, 1927-8', Journal of Southern African Studies, 11 (1984). For the beer boycotts, see P. la Hausse, 'The struggle for the city: alcohol, the ematsheni and popular culture in Durban, 1902-1936', unpublished MA thesis, University of Cape Town, 1984, passim . For Champion's role and his banishment, see S. Marks, The Ambiguities of Dependence in South Africa. Class, Race and Nationalism in Twentieth Century Natal (Baltimore and Johannesburg, 1986), Chapter 3. break

19. For the 1927 Native Administration Act, see S. Dubow, 'Holding "a just balance between white and black": the Native Affairs Department in South Africa, c. 1920-1933', Journal of Southern African Studies, 12, 2 (1986).

20. See Luthuli, Let My People Go, p.95. Mshiyeni's role comes out clearly in the account given by Carl Faye, a clerk in the Native Affairs Department, 'Résumé of proceedings', Annexure 5 to 'Bantu Conference held in the Umgeni Court, Pietermaritzburg, 22-25th October, 1935', in Natal Archives, Chief Native Commissioner's Papers, Box 110 (Provisional numbering) CNC 94/19 N1/15/5.

21. S. Marks, The ambiguities of dependence: John L. Dube of Natal', Journal of Southern African Studies, 1 (1975), pp.176-9.

22. The rivalry between Champion and Dube was legendary; it continued until the latter's death in 1946. It almost led to legal action between Champion and the Natal Native Congress leaders in 1939—only prevented through the action of ANC national leaders. See, e. g., Calata to Champion, 27 Dec. 1939 and 10 Jan. 1940, microfilm of the Carter-Karis Collection, CKM 15a Xxc3: 41/9, 10; J.S. Malinga, Sec, NNC to Champion, 17 Nov. 1939; 41/41, J.T. Gumede to Champion, 24 Nov. 1939. The President of the NNC at this time was John Dube, the Vice President, A. Mtimkulu; by this time Champion was the Secretary for Lands and Locations in the national ANC; letters between Champion and Dube, ibid., 41/28-30, 1939. For the various ICU factions, see D. 4683 (Hoover Library microfilm of Champion papers) I 32, passim . For splits in the Durban ICU, D.4683 I 1933 37, 'Report on Internal Differences. ICU Yase Natal, 1932-3'; and ibid., 1934-44, Champion to Kadalie, 8 Oct. 1937.

23. See, for example, the letters between Champion and (?) Xaba in 1939 and Champion and W.J. Gobhozi from 1937 in CKM 15a, passim .

24. See, for example, CNC16/19 N/1/9/3 (H.C. Lugg) to SNA Pretoria, 2 March 1935. Cf. also Champion to Editor, Natal Mercury, 13 April 1939: 'The Government eventually got certain school teachers to organise the Zulu Society which is carrying on a sort of propaganda whose aims and objects are not known to many native leaders.'

25. See Colony of Natal, Blue Book on Native Affairs, 1904 (Pietermaritzburg, 1904), pp.72-8, passim .

26. D. Hemson, 'Migrant labour and class consciousness: dockworkers in Durban', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Warwick, 1980, pp. 112-13. According to Cope, 'Zulu royal family', 'syphilis in Zululand and Northern Natal had reached "epidemic proportions" in 1910'. Curiously, he maintains that the high incidence of venereal disease amongst migrant workers decreased from about 1914 and that 'after the post-war influenza pandemic the Zulu were relatively disease-free until the malaria epidemic of the 1930s' (pp. 50, 155). That syphilis died away seems unlikely, but there was undoubtedly a fresh 'moral panic' about venereal disease in the 1930s after a lull following World War I.

27. Blue Book on Native Affairs, 1904, pp. 72-4.

28. M.S. Evans, White and Black in South East Africa (London, 1916), p.82. Evans was one of the Commissioners.

29. Colony of Natal, Report of the Native Affairs Commissioner, 1906-7 (Pietermaritzburg, 1907), pp.17, 25, which stresses in particular the extent to which the 'debauchment of their girls' was 'one of their principal grievances'. As the Commission expressed it, 'nothing is more calculated . . . to stretch the endurance of even the most submissive people to the breaking point'.

30. Evans, Black and White in South East Africa, pp.150-1.

31. Union of South Africa, UG 51-1949, Population Census, 7 May 1946, Vol. 1, Geographical Distribution of the Population of the Union of South Africa (Pretoria, 1949), Table 7, pp. 28-9. I have changed the numbers to the nearest hundred. The rise for Durban was from 27,000 African men and 1500 African women in Durban proper and 12,700 and 5100 in the 'rural areas' around Durban in 1921 to 53,700 men and 30,700 women (with 1500 men and 18 women in 'rural Durban') in 1936, to 81,500 continue

men and 30,000 women (856 and 12 in 'rural' Durban) in 1946. Ibid., p.24.

32. Ibid., p.28.

men and 30,000 women (856 and 12 in 'rural' Durban) in 1946. Ibid., p.24.

32. Ibid., p.28.

33. T. Nairn, The Break-up of Britain (London, 1977), p.340.

34. 1930-32 Native Economic Commission, Evidence, 6268. (Although the Report of the 1930-32 NEC was published at the Government Printer's, Pretoria, as UG 22-'32, the evidence was not, and it only exists in a variety of TSS in South African libraries, of which the most complete is at University of South Africa, Pretoria. The School of Oriental and African Studies, London, has an almost complete microfilm.)

35. Rev. J.L. Dube, 'The arrest of progress of Christianity among the heathen tribes of South Africa', in The Evangelisation of South Africa. Report of the Sixth Genera] Missionary Conference of South Africa, Held at Johannesburg, June 30th -July 3rd 1925 (Cape Town, 1925), p.64.

36. MS MAR 2.08.5 File 74, KCM 8337, 24 Feb. 1928, cited in Cope, "The Zulu royal family', p.301.

37. Cope, "The Zulu royal family', p.156.

38. ZS II/5, Luthuli to Mapanza, 22 May 1942.

39. ZS IV/1/3, Ngidi to Mpanza, encl. TSS, not signed, but initialled 'AHN'.

40. Ibid . Capitals in original.

39. ZS IV/1/3, Ngidi to Mpanza, encl. TSS, not signed, but initialled 'AHN'.

40. Ibid . Capitals in original.

41. ZS II/13, Ngidi to Mpanza, 1 Nov. 1945.

42. ZS III/13, Mpanza to Ngidi, 29 Nov. 1945.

43. ZS III/1/7, Mpanza to H.I.E. Dhlomo, 28 Dec. 1943.

44. So unpopular were the Regent's war efforts that in 1942 it was reported that he was 'nearly stabbed by one of his own men at Mome, [and] someone else threw a big stone . . . at him in his tent . . . at Eshowe'. ZS II/7, A.W. Dhlamini to Mpanza, 17 March 1942.

45. Selby Ngcobo was the first to express his disaffection, when he resigned from the Zulu Society and the Natal Bantu Teachers' Association in 1939, although the grounds are not clear (see ZS VI/1, Ngcobo to Mpanza, 30 June 1939). Although in 1944 Luthuli called the members of the Zulu Society his 'great friends', by the end of 1945 Ngidi was warning Mpanza that Luthuli 'has industriously and consistently of late absented himself from all our Z.S. Executive meetings'. (ZS II/17, Luthuli to Mpanza, 4 Jan. 1944 and ZS II/13, Ngidi to Mpanza, 1 Nov. 1945.) Cf. ZS II/15, Luthuli to President, 19 Jan. 1946, where Luthuli excused himself from the Zulu Society Conference, allegedly because he had been called home on urgent business, and asked that his name as seconder of Ngidi's 'subject on African townships' be omitted 'because as I pointed out even as a society we had not come to a common policy on the matter even apart from the matter being linked with high African politics. Towns are not artificially sponsored, but grow around industries or fairly mass occupation with labour legislation. . . . What chance have Africans under the present economic state?' A.W.G. Champion was never a vigorous supporter of the Zulu Society, and Ngidi accused him also of 'working very hard [with Luthuli] to undermine the very life of the Zulu Society, or at least its present office-bearers'. (ZS II/13, Ngidi to Mpanza, 1 Nov. 1945.)

46. ZS II/7, President to Mpanza, 30 Jan. 1946. Mpanza actually left in November 1945.

47. According to Donovan Williams, this was acutely experienced by the Scottish-trained African missionary, Tiyo Soga, in the nineteenth century. See D. Williams, Umfundisi. A Biography of Tiyo Soga (Lovedale, 1979). André Odendaal, Vukani Bantu! The Beginnings of Black Protest Politics in South Africa to 1912 (Cape Town, 1983), shows that in the nineteenth century Eastern Cape 'the educated élite who participated in the new western forms of politics . . . were much more tied to their own communities and much more concerned with traditional matters than has been realised' (p. xii).

48. The material on and quotations from R.R.R. Dhlomo come from T. Couzens, "The New African. Herbert Dhlomo and Black South African Literature, 1903-1956', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, 1981. break

49. See G. L. Mosse, 'Nationalism and respectability: normal and abnormal sexuality in the nineteenth century', Journal of Contemporary History, 17, 2 (1982).

50. Cited in Couzens, "The New African', p.308.

51. Luthuli, Let My People Go, pp.37-8.

52. Natal Archives, Acc. No. 302, Charter of the Zulu Society.

53. ZS II/7, Dhlamini to Mpanza, 6 Nov. 1945.

54. Natal Archives, Chief Native Commissioner's files. Box 110 (provisional numbering), CNC 94/19, Part II, 'Conference of Native Chiefs, Pietermaritzburg, 31st July, 1939'.

55. Cf. ZS II/7, Dhlamini to Mpanza, 6 Nov. 1945, where he describes the reversal of the decision of the royal family to appoint Thandayiphi heir to Solomon kaDinizulu as 'disastrous to the Society' and a 'nullification of all our toil and sweat'.

56. For Mshiyeni's role, see, for example, the records of the various meetings between state officials and the Zulu chiefs, reports of the Native Advisory Council, the correspondence between Edgar Brookes and the Zulu Society, and that between Luthuli and the Zulu Society. His greatest coup was settling the so-called 'faction fight' between different segments of the Embo people in 1934, after six years of intermittent strife and several deaths and injuries. See Natal Archives, Faye Papers, Box 11, 'Record of Public Proceedings at Peace making ceremony at Mbumbulu Store, 19 Oct. 1934'; Natal Witness, 16 Oct. 1934. This was the first time that the Native Affairs Department had called on the services of the Zulu royal house to intervene in a dispute amongst Natal Africans.

57. Charter of the Zulu Society, sections 24 and 35.

58. Jeff Guy, 'Analysing precapitalist societies in southern Africa', Journal of Southern African Studies, 13, 2 (1986).

59. R. Finlayson, 'Xhosa women's language of respect: isihlonipa sabafazi, unpublished paper presented at the Africa Studies Seminar, Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, Aug. 1985, pp.7-8.

60. H.J. Simons, African Women: Their Legal Status in South Africa (London, 1968), pp.202ff.

61. Colony of Natal, Blue Book on Native Affairs, 1904, pp.73-4.

62. Amelia Mariotti, "The incorporation of African women into wage employment in South Africa, 1920-1970', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut, 1980, Chapter 1. For the importance of tribal control over youth for the white farmers, see Cope, 'The Zulu royal family', pp.315-21.

63. UG 22-'32, Union of South Africa, Native Economic Commission (Pretoria, 1932), p.140, cited in Mariotti, 'The incorporation of African women', pp.91-2.

64. Section 7 (a) and (d) of the Native (Urban Areas) Act, 1923. Amendment Act 1930 (n. 25), cited in Mariotti, 'The incorporation of African women', on which this section draws heavily.

65. Natal Archives, CNC Papers, Box 110 (provisional numbering), CNC 94/19 N/1/15/5, Part IV, 'Meeting of Chiefs etc at Eshowe, 28 July, 1937.'

66. Ibid., Box 41 (provisional numbering), CNC 38/47/ N/1/7/2 (X): 'Meeting of Chiefs with Minister of Native Affairs, Pietermaritzburg, 1939.'

65. Natal Archives, CNC Papers, Box 110 (provisional numbering), CNC 94/19 N/1/15/5, Part IV, 'Meeting of Chiefs etc at Eshowe, 28 July, 1937.'

66. Ibid., Box 41 (provisional numbering), CNC 38/47/ N/1/7/2 (X): 'Meeting of Chiefs with Minister of Native Affairs, Pietermaritzburg, 1939.'

67. Evidence, 1930-32 Native Economic Commission, p.6314.

68. For Sibusisiwe Makhanya, see my introduction to 'Not Either an Experimental Doll': the Separate Worlds of Three South African Women (Pietermaritzburg, 1986). There is also an unpublished biography by M. Trowbridge, simply entitled 'Sibusisiwe' (which means 'We are blessed'), in the Killie Campbell Library, 3 parts, KCM 14343-5. The descriptive phrases are from the American Board Archives, Boston, AB 15.4, Vol. 41, M. Walbridge to M. Emerson, 20 June 1927, and from 'Miss Makhanya in Boston', Missionary Herald, Nov. 1927, p.411.

69. KCL. Killie Campbell Oral History Transcripts: KCAV interview with Bertha Mkize, Durban.

70. This section draws heavily on Marks, 'Not Either an Experimental Doll', Introduction. continue

For her stay in the United States, see R.H. Davis, 'Producing the "Good Africa": South Carolina's Penn School as a guide for African education in South Africa', in T.A. Mogomba and M. Nyaggah, Independence Without Freedom: The Political Economy of Colonial Education in Southern Africa (Santa Barbara, 1980), pp.83-112.

71. See D. Gaitskell's pioneering essay, 'Wailing for purity: prayer unions, African mothers and adolescent daughters, 1912-1940', in S. Marks and R. Rathbone, eds., Industrialisation and Social Change: African Class Formation, Culture and Consciousness, 1870-1930 (London, 1982).

72. Cope, 'The Zulu royal family', records the use of the term izimpantsholo from the beginning of the century (p.50); S.L. Kark, 'The social pathology of syphilis in Africans', South African Medical Journal, 23 (29 Jan. 1949), maintains that isifo sedolopi and isifo sabelungu were the only terms known. He was writing, however, nearly fifty years later, in 1949.

73. S.L. Kark, "The social pathology', pp.77-84. He also reviews the other literature cited.

74. Box 41 (provisional numbering) CNC 38/47 N/1/7/2 (X).

75. Kark, 'The social pathology', passim .

76. The Charter of the Zulu Society.

77. G.L. Mosse, 'Nationalism and respectability', pp. 242-3. For a brilliant evocation of the impact of 'modernity' on consciousness in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Marshall Bermann, All That is Solid Melts into Air. The Experience of Modernity (London, 1983). It is interesting that European anti-modernist nationalists also inveighed against the evils of ballroom dancing, fearing it loosened sexual control. (Mosse, p.228.)

78. Natal Native Teachers'Journal, April 1949, p.186.

79. Ibid . For the editor's views, see the issue for October 1948; Gibben expresses his opinion in the issue for July 1949, p.186.

78. Natal Native Teachers'Journal, April 1949, p.186.

79. Ibid . For the editor's views, see the issue for October 1948; Gibben expresses his opinion in the issue for July 1949, p.186.

80. I.V. Hull, 'The bourgeoisie and its discontents: reflections on "nationalism and respectability"', Journal of Contemporary History, 17, 2 (1982), p.249.