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Thesis Hum 2020 Fagan Henry Allan.Pdf THE WIDER KWAZULU-NATAL REGION CIRCA 1700 TO THE ONSET OF COLONIALISM: A CRITICAL ESSAY ON SOURCES AND HISTORIOGRAPHY By Henry Allan Fagan B.Soc.Sci., University of Cape Town, 2014Town B.A. Honours, University of Cape Town, 2015 Cape A Dissertation Submitted in ofFulfilment of the Requirements for a M.A. by research. Department of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town UniversityFebruary, 2020 The copyright of this thesis vests in theTown author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only.Cape Published by the Universityof of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University i Abstract This dissertation is an extended essay dealing with historical productions on the late independent era (the late “pre-colonial” epoch) of the wider KwaZulu-Natal region. The project pays particular attention to the development of the historiography and examines how it has shaped and in turn been shaped by the source material over time. Attention is also drawn to issues with terminology and disciplinary convention, including the distinction which is traditionally made between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ sources. The dissertation’s scope extends beyond the discipline of history to interrogate how influences from the fields of anthropology, art history, archaeology, and literary criticism have shaped the production of history. It also examines the productions of African intellectuals whose works were excluded from the discipline of history during the late colonial and apartheid eras. Among other things, this essay draws attention to historiographical breaks in the literature and considerers where paradigm shifts and epistemic ruptures can be discerned. ii Contents Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................................. iii Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................................... 10 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 10 Part 1: Records and Witnesses ............................................................................................................. 12 Part 2: Cultivating Histories .................................................................................................................. 22 Part 3: The Devastation Thread ............................................................................................................ 33 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 44 Chapter 2 ............................................................................................................................................... 47 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 47 Part 1: Orality, Achievement, and State-Formation ............................................................................. 48 Part 2: Materialism and Ecology ........................................................................................................... 60 Part 3: Production and Reproduction ................................................................................................... 67 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 75 Chapter 3 ............................................................................................................................................... 77 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 77 Part 1: Criticisms and Divisions ............................................................................................................. 79 Part 2: Ideology and Theory .................................................................................................................. 87 Part 3: The ‘Alibi’ ................................................................................................................................. 101 Part 4: Evidence and Invention ........................................................................................................... 111 Part 5: Post-Historic Turn .................................................................................................................... 120 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 131 Chapter 4 ............................................................................................................................................. 133 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 133 Part 1: Regimes and Rediscoveries ..................................................................................................... 134 Part 2: Refutation and Revisionism ..................................................................................................... 141 Part 3: Producing Decolonial History .................................................................................................. 149 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 157 Final Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 159 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................ 164 iii Acknowledgments First of all, I would like to thank my mother and my father for all their help and support. I count myself lucky to have caring parents who have taken such a keen interest in my studies. I am also grateful to my friend Jules Skotnes-Brown, whose camaraderie and research assistance was much valued. Further thanks are owed to the Archive and Public Culture (APC) research team (past and present) for their support and for the resources they have shared with me these past three years. In addition, I am grateful to the many scholars who have read and offered critical commentary on early drafts of my work at APC workshops and at department meetings. Special thanks are reserved for John Wright for his insights and wisdom. I would also like to thank Simon Hall for his thought provoking conversation. I am further indebted to the National Research Foundation and the Completion Grant for their financial assistance – support which was essential for the attainment of this degree. Finally, I owe a massive thank you to my supervisors Maanda Mulaudzi, and in particular, Carolyn Hamilton. Without their immense guidance, expertise, patience, and kindness, this project would have never been possible. 1 Introduction In this dissertation I produce an extended historiographical review of south-east Africa’s late independent era1 and focus in particular on the region which is today called KwaZulu-Natal. This study offers an unprecedented analysis of the historiography both in terms of its bibliographic depth and in the scope of the historical productions it examines. This dissertation has also drawn on works from across numerous other disciplines and this has enabled me to produce a more encompassing picture of the influences which have shaped the production of the historiography over time. These contributions include works from the disciplines of archaeology, anthropology, and art history. I have also looks beyond these to cover productions which have conventionally fallen outside of academia. I am referring here to the vernacular works of black intellectuals whose productions were excluded from the white-dominated academies during the colonial period and the apartheid era. I subsequently refer to these works as the ‘exiled Black Humanities’ because they incorporated a range of political, social-cultural, and historical elements. Unlike other historiographical overviews, this study identifies how works by different researchers shaped one another’s perspectives and consequently influenced each other’s approaches to the production of history over time. While this work is a historiography, it also pays close attention to the nature of sources and evidence. My approach is consistent with a conventional ‘production of history’ approach – a strategy which recognises the contextual forces at work at the specific time a historical production made. The approach has been conceptualised by the works of two scholars. The first of these scholars is David William Cohen, whose 1994 book The Combing of History2 interrogated the socio-political forces which shape the production of history. The second is Michel-Rolph Trouillot, whose 1995 book Silencing the Past3 examined how power structures operate
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