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TH TH THE MISR REVIEW E MISR RE E MISR RE THETHE MI MISRSR RE REVIVIEWEW NUMBER 3 • May 2020 6 : Introduction to this Issue MahMood MaMdani VI VI 7 : Contributors to this Issue EW EW 8 : Revisiting Nguni Formations: The Mfecane and Migrations in South-Eastern Africa sabelo J. ndlovu-GatshEni 46 : discussion : Mfecane and Migration: A Critique of the Nguni Diaspora haydéE Bangerezako 61 : The Ndebele Kingdom of Mzilikazi Khumalo SabeLo J. ndLovu-GAtshenI 95 : discussion : The Concepts of Tribe and Nation in African Historiography yahya sseremba 112 : Decolonization/Decoloniality: Converging African/Latin American Thinking sabelo J. ndlovu-GatshEni 141 : discussion : The Limits of Decoloniality suren Pillay 153 : Trepidation, Longing and Belonging: Liberating the Curriculum at Universities in South Africa saleem Badat 187 : Travel Writing as an Empirical Mode of Knowing: A Methodological Critique of James Bruce’s Travels and Adventures in Abyssinia nEtsanEt GebremichaEl 218 : Guidelines for Contributors NUMBER 3 • May 2020 number 3 • may 2020 THE MISR REVIEW the mIsr revIew the mIsr revIew Copyright © 2020 The M I SR Review All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Cover & Publication Design: Aurobind Patel Editorial Services Consultant: Monica Seeber Printed in India by Prodon Enterprises, Mumbai First Printing, 2020 ISBN 978- 9970- 473- 06- 9 Makerere Institute of Social Research P. O. Box 16022 Wandegeya Kampala, Uganda Tel: +256 414 532 838 | +256 414 554 582 | +256 312 132 100 Email: [email protected] www.misr.mak.ac.ug contents • number 3 • mAy 2020 THE MISR REVIEW 6 : Introduction to this Issue mAhmood mAmdAnI 7 : Contributors to this Issue 8 : Revisiting Nguni Formations: The Mfecane and Migrations in South-Eastern Africa SabeLo J. ndLovu-GAtshenI 46 : discussion : Mfecane and Migration: A Critique of the Nguni Diaspora Haydée BanGerezAko 61 : The Ndebele Kingdom of Mzilikazi Khumalo SabeLo J. ndLovu-GAtshenI 95 : discussion : The Concepts of Tribe and Nation in African Historiography YahyA sserembA 112 : Decolonization/Decoloniality: Converging African/Latin American Thinking SabeLo J. ndLovu-GAtshenI 141 : discussion : The Limits of Decoloniality suren Pillay 153 : Trepidation, Longing and Belonging: Liberating the Curriculum at Universities in South Africa Saleem BadAt 187 : Travel Writing as an Empirical Mode of Knowing: A Methodological Critique of James Bruce’s Travels and Adventures in Abyssinia netsAnet GebremIchAeL 218 : Guidelines for Contributors 6 the mIsr revIew 7 Introduction to this Issue Contributors to this Issue This issue appears more than a year after its scheduled publica- Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni is a research professor and Director of tion. We have no alibis to offer, just an admission and a request Scholarship in the Department of Leadership and Transformation that this be taken as an illustration of the continuing steep learn- (DLT) in the office of the Principal and Vice-Chancellor at the Uni- ing curve at MISR. versity of South Africa (Unisa). Key to research, we argued in Our Mission in 2016, is formu- Haydée Bangerezako is a postdoctoral fellow at Makerere Insti- lating the problem of research. Acknowledging that this would tute of Social Research, specializing in historical, cultural and po- require a long journey, we dedicated The MISR Review to a dou- litical Studies. Her interest is in a decolonizing study of the Great ble endeavour: one, to broadcast the intellectual work undertaken Lakes region from a feminist perspective. at MISR, particularly by advanced doctoral students, to the wider scholarly community; and two, to energize and promote debate in Yahya Sseremba is a research fellow at Makerere Institute of So- that community. cial Research (MISR) in Kampala. This issue introduces a mode of debate that we hope will take Suren Pillay is Associate Professor and Senior Researcher at the us a step further in the journey we began in 2012. The core of this Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape, issue are three articles by Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni: “Revisiting South Africa. He is interested in the intellectual and political leg- Nguni Formations: The Mfecane and Migrations in South-Eastern acies of colonialism in the present. Africa”; “The Ndebele Kingdom of Mzilikazi Khumalo”; and “De- colonization/Decoloniality: Converging African/Latin American Saleem Badat is Research Professor in the College of Humanities Thinking”. Given as a set of lectures at Makerere Institute of Social at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and former vice-chancellor of Research, they have been revised for publication. We have invited Rhodes University, South Africa. three different scholars to contribute a critical discussion, one on Netsanet Gebremichael Weldesenbet holds a PhD in Social Stud- each lecture. ies from Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR) at Makerere The issue also contains two stand-alone articles. Netsanet Ge- University, Kampala, Uganda. She is currently a researcher at the bremichael, at the time a doctoral student at MISR, explores travel Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University. writing as an empirical mode of knowing. Saleem Badat joins a critical discussion on decolonizing the curriculum in universities, a subject to which we hope to devote more space in future. We invite readers so inclined to send short responses (maxi- mum 1,000 words) to the above contributions. Mahmood Mamdani | Lyn Ossome | Suren Pillay | Samson Bezabeh March, 2020 8 the misr review revisiting nguni Formations: the Mfecane and migrations in south-eastern Africa 9 Revisiting Nguni Formations: Introduction How African is African history? The question haunts historians The Mfecane and Migrations in today. It is a loaded question that encapsulates a number of epis- temic challenges faced by historians as they try to produce African South-Eastern Africa history. The first challenge is that of the very idea of history and philosophy of history, cascading from the dawn of Euromodernity and Enlightenment thought.1 The Eurocentric idea of history and philosophy of history is permeated by linear modernist thought Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni that can be rendered as “ahistory”, “prehistory”, and “History” (with a capital “H”).2 How free is African history from the Euro- centric idea of history and philosophy of history? The second chal- Abstract lenge is that of chronology and periodisation whereby the colonial interlude as a key time holder (pre-colonial, colonial and postco- The history of Nguni-speaking people of south-eastern Africa is lonial) is at the very centre of African history.3 How can African marked by epic migrations and moments of high levels of violence history be freed from the colonial interlude? The third challenge of which the Mfecane is a well-known signature. But like all histo- in understanding even pre-colonial history is the use of modern- ries of African people it is not free from colonial falsifications and ist vocabulary and concepts.4 This problem arises from the very distortions. This article revisits the nineteenth-century history of complex reality of how professional historians are produced, and the Nguni-speaking people with a view to understanding how mo- particularly the vocabulary and concepts they learn during their bility, settlement and migration became constitutive of pre-colo- training as historians in modern Westernized universities where nial people’s lives. The Mfecane as the discursive terrain within modernist vocabulary and concepts are the language of intellectu- which Nguni mobilities and migrations of the nineteenth century al and academic discourse. emerged is subjected to critical analysis, including its rich histori- All these questions arise within a context well identified by ography. What is underscored is that the Mfecane was a creature Derek R. Peterson and Giacomo Macola: “Africa’s historians seem of colonial encounters, particularly mercantile capitalism, rather always to be searching for an archive to call their own.”5 These than of pre-colonial dynamics. Empirically, the article examines the migrations of Soshangane and his establishment of the Gaza 1 E.S. Atieno-Odhiambo, “From African Historiographies to an African Philosophy of History,” in Africanizing Knowledge: African Studies Across kingdom at Delagoa Bay in Mozambique, and the migration of the Discipline ed. T. Falola and C. Jennings (New Brunswick and London: Zwangendaba and his people – an epic story of 20 years of migra- Transactions Publishers, 2002), pp. 13–64. tion, affecting five countries: Mozambique, Eswatini (Swaziland), 2 S. J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization (London and New York, Routledge, 2018.) Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania. The Zwangendaba mi- 3 K.K. Prah, “Has Rhodes Fallen? Decolonizing the Humanities in Africa grations bring the Southern, Central and East African regions into and Constructing Intellectual Sovereignty,” in K.K. Prah, The Challenge of Decolonizing Education: CASAS Book Series No. 128 (Rondebosch: Centre for the history of the Nguni-speaking people. Advanced Studies of African Society). 4 J. Depelchin, Silences in African history: Between the Syndromes of Discovery and Abolition (Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, 2005). 5 D.R. Peterson and G. Macola, “Introduction: Homespun Historiography