One debate which percolates through the various essays is the question of African and European agency. Was the period of exceptional violence which most contributors agree occurred in the early decades of the nineteenth century a consequence of African activities (the eruption of the Zulu, and refugees from Zulu imperialism, on to the highveld as proposed by Omer-Cooper, among others) or was it the result of European activities (labour-raiding and slaving from the Cape in the south and from Delagoa Bay in the north, as argued by Cobbing)? In this debate, the contributors have agreed that it is fruitful to pose the question in terms of African and European agency. But there are clear indications in a number of the essays that this argument itself may impose a structure on the study of the period that limits, rather than opens up, historical enquiry. In this form, the disagreements over the relative weighting of European and African agency repeat the conventional bifurcation of the southern African past into black histories and white histories, meeting only in conflict. This division continues despite the wealth of evidence which reveals a more fluid situation, in which European and African actions (and, indeed, the activities of hunter-gatherers – as Thomas Dowson shows in his contribution) are but different ingredients in a well-shaken cocktail. It may be necessary to entertain the idea that the discussions of African and European agency, while facilitating a debate in these pages, may be responsible for the exclusion from these essays of evidence and material which does not fit the bipolar form taken by the debate. There is a further danger that this division of the history of later precolonial times will tempt post-apartheid authors of a revised history of this period – especially the writers of new South African history textbooks – into replacing unproblematically black villains with white villains, instead of encouraging them to come to grips with the full complexity of relations of domination, subordination, resistance and interaction within and between the various societies of precolonial southern Africa.
The collection of these varied essays and their publication in a single volume will help students of the debates to ask crucial questions about what has been occluded from the debates, what has been elided in their presentation in this form, what has been left silent, and what might be absent. The presentation in the book of ongoing debates prompts not only the identification of such silences and absences, but a questioning as to why the agreements about these silences come about. In so far as this volume facilitates the posing of these questions, it seeks to go beyond the presentation of the particular set of positions currently debated to pose further questions about this historiography and this period, and to begin the work of setting the agenda for new research directions.
The title of the book is a reminder that while the ongoing debates are important, the attacking of the mfecane by Cobbing creates a time of aftermath. In this aftermath, for some, the mfecane is, as it was put at the colloquium, dead and buried; for others it is about to have new life breathed into it. For still others, aftermath connotes a mown field with new horizons created by the cropping of the grass. Some scatterings may remain to be raked in and a range of species in the fallow growth – some new, others residual – begin the struggle to assert themselves. In the aftermath, however, the mfecane is, at least, a concept that cannot be taken for granted. However it is used, whether it is treated as a massive historical myth, or a real historical phenomenon, or neither, a new precision, care and explicitness is demanded of its usage.
Acknowledgements
An abridged version of this Introduction was presented to the Sparkling Waters Colloquium on School History Textbooks for a Democratic South Africa (November 1993). I am grateful to John Wright, Thomas Dowson, Rob Morrell, Jeff Peires and Jeff Guy for their comments on that version. I would like to thank David William Cohen for inviting me to host a seminar at the Institute for the Advanced Study in the African Humanities, Northwestern University, where my ideas for this Introduction first crystallised.
1.J.D. Omer-Cooper, The Zulu Aftermath: A Nineteenth-century Revolution in Bantu Africa, London, 1966.
2.'Mfecane' is the form of the word conventionally used in association with the Nguni-speaking peoples of the coastal areas of southern Africa. 'Lifaqane' is the equivalent term written in the Southern Sotho orthography that is used in Lesotho, while 'difaqane' is the same word rendered in Southern Sotho orthography as used in South Africa. The origins of the word are a matter of debate. Scholars who view the term as a word with African origins place it in italics, as they do any other non-English terms that occur in an English text. Likewise some scholars who view the mfecane as a major phenomenon in the history of the period elect to capitalise the first letter. Those scholars who see the term as a European invention without any foundation in African lexicons use the term without either italics or an initial capital letter, as do writers who seek simply to indicate a down-scaling (itself of different orders for different authors) of the term. These choices are maintained in the book as a clear signal of one of the lines of debate around the topic of the mfecane.
3.Cobbing delivered a spoken presentation at Durban-Westville. The revised notes of his talk subsequently circulated as a 'paper'.
4.The two papers delivered at the combined seminars were J. Cobbing, 'Jettisoning the Mfecane (with Perestroika)', and J. Wright, 'Political Mythology and the Making of Natal's Mfecane'.
5.For a discussion of Inkatha's presentation of Zulu history see D. Golan, 'Inkatha and its Use of the Zulu Past', History in Africa, 18 (1991), 113–26; P. Forsyth, 'The Past in Service of the Present: The Political Use of History by Chief A.N.M.Buthelezi, 1951–1991', South African Historical Journal, 26 (1992), 74–92. For a discussion of the engagement of academics in debate over the public presentation of Zulu history see C. A. Hamilton, 'Authoring Shaka: Models, Metaphors and Historiography', Ph.D. thesis, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1993, 14–26.
6.J. Cobbing, 'The Mfecane as Alibi: Thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo', Journal of African History, 29(1988), 487–519.
7.See, most notably, J. Richner, 'The Withering Away of the "Lifaqane" : Or a Change of Paradigm', B. A. Hons. essay, Rhodes University, 1988; A.C. Webster, 'Ayliff, Whiteside, and the Fingo "Emancipation" of 1835: A Reappraisal', B.A. Hons. essay, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, 1988.
8.Reader's Digest Illustrated History of South Africa: The Real Story, (Consultant Editor C. Saunders, Historical Advisor C. Bundy), Cape Town, The Reader's Digest, 1988, 2nd ed. with amendments, 1989.
9.A selection of the papers from this conference was produced in a bound form, edited by D.R. Edgecombe, J.P.C. Laband and P.S. Thompson, and entitled The Debate on Zulu Origins: A Selection of Papers on the Zulu Kingdom and Early Colonial Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1992. The papers reproduced were those which focused on the Cobbing intervention and associated issues concerning the production of the history of the Zulu kingdom. Note also that in May 1990, the Wits History Workshop held a History Teachers' Conference on 'Perspectives on Pre-industrial South Africa in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries' at which John Wright gave an invited paper entitled 'Beyond the Mfecane: What do we put in its place?'
10.Organised by the History Department, University of Natal, Durban, the panel included Julian Cobbing, John Wright, John Omer-Cooper, Shula Marks and Jeff Guy.
11.Immediately following the colloquium the Wits History Workshop hosted as part of their series of Teachers' Conferences, a special one-day workshop on 'Teaching the Mfecane'. In November 1993, a four-day colloquium on 'School History Textbooks for a Democratic South Africa' was held at Sparkling Waters, Magaliesberg, the organising theme of which was the mfecane debate.
12.N. Etherington, 'The Aftermath of the Aftermath', South African Historical Journal, 25 (1991), 154–62; P. Maylam, 'The Death of the Mfecane?', South African Historical Journal, 25(1991) 163–6; J. du Bruyn, 'Ousting Both the Mfecane and the Anti–Mfecane', South African Historical Journal, 25 (1991) 166–70; A. Webster, 'The Mfecane Paradigm Overthrown', South African Historical Journal, 25 (1991) 170–2; S. Meintjes, 'The Mfecane Colloquium: Impressions', South African Historical Journal, 25 (1991) 173–6.
13.C. Saunders, 'Conference Report: Mfecane Afterthoughts', Social Dynamics, 17 (2), 1991, 171–7.
14.See