The Tourist Viewer, the Bushmen and the Zulu: Imaging and (Re)Invention of Identities Through Contemporary Visual Cultural Productions
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The Tourist Viewer, the Bushmen and the Zulu: Imaging and (re)invention of identities through contemporary visual cultural productions By Nhamo Anthony Mhiripiri Student No. 201512272 Supervisor: Prof. Keyan Tomaselli Submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, Development and Social Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, in fulfilment of the requirements of a PHD in Culture, Communication and Media Studies i Table of Contents Declaration iii Acknowledgements iv Dedication v Abstract vi Acronyms vii Map ix Chapter One: Introduction 1 Chapter Two: Literature Review and Theoretical Framework 23 Chapter Three: Research Methodology 66 Chapter Four: Encounters at Zulu Cultural Villages and Identity Implications 105 Chapter Five: Contemporary Bushman Cultural Performances 148 Chapter Six: An Interactive Reading of Kalahari RainSong and Photographs 192 Chapter Seven: Vetkat Kruiper and His Postmodern Art 210 Chapter Eight: Critical Evaluation and Conclusion 254 Bibliography 298 Appendices 339 ii Declaration I, Nhamo Anthony Mhiripiri, hereby declare that this thesis is my own original work, has not been submitted for any degree or examination at any other university, and that the sources I have used have been fully acknowledged by complete references. This thesis is submitted in fulfilment of the Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Culture, Communication and Media Studies in the Faculty of Humanities, Development and Social Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa. Signature ____________________________ Date: November 22, 2008 iii Acknowledgements This thesis is a result of assistance and support from individuals and institutions without whom it was going to be impossible to complete. I am very grateful to my mentor and supervisor Prof. Keyan Tomaselli for his patience, understanding and invaluable guidance. The generosity extended to me by Ruth and Keyan Tomaselli towards the reworking of this thesis is deeply felt. Special mention should also go to Dr Matthew Durington and Dr Michael Francis who helped me with rethinking several assumptions that I was stuck with. The current CCMS post- graduate students are appreciated for affording me an opportunity to present part of my work before them for peer-review. Through the grant-holder of National Research Foundation research grant, Prof Keyan Tomaselli, I am indebted to the NRF of South Africa for partly funding this research. The Natal University Humanities Faculty also contributed financial assistance. My employer the Midlands State University also extended me some time to study and research in spite of the occasional bureaucratic problems and the dispiriting decade-long Zimbabwe crisis that was always in the background. My CCMS colleagues over the years, Kyle Enevoldsen, Vanessa McLennan-Dodd, Mick Francis and the special memory of Arnold Shepperson cannot go unmentioned. Lauren Dyll needs special mention and thanking for assistance with final copy-editing, alongside Mick Francis and Keyan Tomaselli. However, any errors are entirely mine. I must also thank Belinda Kruiper for giving me permission to use Vetkat Kruiper’s works and availing a soft copy on disk. This thesis would not have come to fruition without my associations on both a social and academic level with Belinda and her late husband, Vetkat. Karen Peters translated into English the Afrikaans text on some of Vetkat Kruiper’s paintings. I also take the opportunity to thank Vanessa McLennan-Dodd and Nelia Oets for translating a number of my interviews from Afrikaans to English. Last but not least, I should thank my wife Joyce for her understanding and support throughout the years. iv Dedication Antoinette naTawanda shingai kutara nzira dzenyu. v Abstract The thesis is an ethnographic exploration of the visual performances of the ( ≠Khomani) Bushmen of the Northern Cape and the Zulu from KwaZulu-Natal of South Africa. I investigate how the ≠Khomani and the Zulu involved in the cultural tourism industry are using archetypical tropes of ethnicity, and how they recreate these in the process of formulating context-specific identities in contemporary South Africa. The Bushmen and Zulu iconography that is ubiquitous is read against the modern day quotidian lives of the people concerned. The role and participation of tourists and researchers (anthro-tourists) in the performative culture of cultural tourism is investigated. An opportunity is also taken to critique the artistic creations of Vetkat Kruiper which partly arise because of the need to satisfy a tourism industry interested in Bushman arts and artefacts. Similarly his wife’s ‘biographical’ book Kalahari Rainsong (2004) is critiqued interactively and allows me to appreciate my encounters with people and text in the Kalahari. My visits to cultural villages where either the Zulu or the Bushman self-perform permit me to indulge in critical performative writing in which I also investigate the role and place of (anthro)tourists in the reinvention of site-specific identities. vi Acronyms ANC - African National Congress BEE - Black Economic Empowerment. CCMS - Culture, Communication and Media Studies CPA - Communal Property Association DP - Democratic Party EU - European Union IFP - Inkatha Freedom Party KTP - Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park KZN - KwaZulu-Natal MSNBC – Microsoft/National Broadcasting Company MSU - Midlands State University NGO - Non Government Organisation PAC - Pan African Congress SABC - South African Broadcasting Corporation SACOD - Southern African Communications for Development SADF - South African Defence Force SASI - South African San Institute SATOUR - South African Tourism SWAPO - South West Africa People’s Organisation TOURVEST - Tourism Investment Corporation UN - United Nations UNISA - University of South Africa USAID - United States Agency for International Development WTO - World Trade Organisation ZANU - Zimbabwe African National Union vii ZANU PF - Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front ZAPU - Zimbabwe African People’s Union ZBC - Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation viii Cultural Tourism and Sites of Significance Visited ix Chapter One Introduction Heritage and cultural tourism is flourishing in South Africa, and museums and cultural villages and related performances have been initiated in the country. Crafts production and sales are reportedly booming, and there are plans to even expand the crafts industry in anticipation of good business that will come with the hosting of the 2010 Soccer World Cup (Rogerson & Gustav 2004).‘Cultural tourism’ is presently a significant market segment attracting attention from both tourism practitioners and academics (Jansen van Veuren 2004). Academics are concerned about several issues pertaining to cultural tourism. These include policy issues relating to cultural tourism and the politics of tourism, especially the power dynamics between tourism entrepreneurs and local communities involved in the tourism ventures. However, scholars are also preoccupied with identity issues that are integral in cultural tourism ventures, especially when elements of anthropological performances and displays of local indigenous peoples are involved. Since culture is a key tourism resource, “[t]ourism marketing and products are saturated with cultural signifiers” (Jansen van Veuren 2004: 139). The issue of identities has always fascinated Cultural Studies scholars, especially identities of ‘marginalised’ people, such as the working class, gays and lesbians, subaltern cultures such as Rastafarians, and youths and feminist identities (Hall 1996; Grossberg 1996). The identities of people involved in the performative cultural tourism industry of contemporary South Africa are of major importance to this study. Geographic places and spaces are intricately linked to people’s ascribed and inscribed ethnic identities, and cultural tourism often promotes these assumed interconnections as ready cultural capital (Oates 1997a; 1997b; 2002). Debates on how ethnic groups that are popular in the tourism industry the world over are often presented in essentialistic, simplistic, stereotypical images to international tourists (Edensor 2001; Tomaselli 2005; 2007a: Gordon 2002). In Africa, specific ethnic groups are popular in the tourism industry as ‘self-performers’ and producers of ‘ethnic’ art and crafts. 1 Amongst these are the !Kung Bushmen 1 of Namibia, the Maasai of Kenya, and the Zulu of South Africa. These people are usually imagined as still living as hunter-gatherers or as subsistence, pastoralist or agriculturalist lifestyles untainted by modernity (Kasfir 2002; Galaty 2002; Sobania 2002; Kratz & Gordon 2002; Gordon 2002). Certain archetypical images and iconography that make them easily identifiable are produced and circulated for public consumption. For example, ‘warrior images’ of the Zulu and Maasai, ‘pastoral images’ of blood-drinking Maasai, while Bushmen hunters and foragers in the desert are ubiquitous images in most tourism brochures and other visuals. The primary means by which commoditization of ethnicity occurs in the postcolonial era is through print-related media – the postcard and the coffee-table book, the bumper-sticker and the T-shirt logo (Kasfir 2002; 379; de la Harpe et al , 1998). Crafts and paintings are also inscribed or ascribed ethnic attributes so that their collectors easily identify them. The political economy of who gazes on whom, and for what purposes and with what implications has long been studied, especially the so-called Western Same’s gaze on the presumed backward Other (Fabian 1983;