The Complexity of Community Building and Identity Formation in the 19Th and 20Th Centuries: Case Studies from South Africa and the Americas

Home , Mpondo people, Port Shepstone

THE COMPLEXITY OF COMMUNITY BUILDING AND IDENTITY FORMATION IN THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES: CASE STUDIES FROM SOUTH AFRICA AND THE AMERICAS

Nokuthula Cele

Culture and Heritage Tourism, University of KwaZulu-Natal, School of Social Sciences, Durban, South Africa.

Abstract

Community building, as opposed to ethnicity, seems more appropriate as a unit of analysis in the study of human settlements in KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa), the Americas and elsewhere in the 19th and 20th centuries. The KwaMachi chiefdom, in the far south of KwaZulu-Natal (one of the provinces in the north east of South Africa), and other cases in the United States are being used in this essay as examples to show how complex community building has always been. Analysis of the processes of community building in KwaZulu-Natal and the Americas shows that it is often difficult to categorize people along a single line. People of various backgrounds in the regions influenced the development of their own communities. Locating my case studies of KwaZulu-Natal and the Americas within this context, I argue that official and rigid distinctions are not completely dominant due to ongoing interaction through migrations, creation and shifting of identity boundaries, and other alliances, all of which clouded and undermined ethnic homogenization. Human settlements have been shaped by diverse socio-cultural transformations in which multiple identities operated in parallel and intersecting lines, where cultures were modified as people incorporated many cultural elements at local level.

Case studies in this essay suggest that socially and locally constructed identities resulting from such interaction do not always have an official name; rather the sense of belonging is accompanied by a sense of difference among people who embrace an imagined uniform of identity in the construction, negotiation and manipulations of identity that accompany the processes of community building in any changing system. Various stages and contours of this transition could be studied by following the evolution of the community, its geographical position, language, way of life and other aspects. Community building underwent various processes defined by social and political dynamics emerging at different times in history.

Keywords: Community Building, Identity Formation, Culture and heritage INTRODUCTION Americas and elsewhere to show that community building and identity formation are dynamic, adaptive and historically situated. For centuries communities In this essay I use the case studies from KwaZulu- Natal, 1 one of the provinces in South Africa, the Thukela/Tugela river (see map 1 attached, page 12) was defined by the Natal colonial government as a 1 For consistency, KwaZulu-Natal or Natal and boundary between Natal and north of the Zululand will be used alternatively throughout the Thukela/Tugela that was inhabited by the Zulu article. What is now the KwaZulu-Natal province in nation. After the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879, areas north the southeast of South Africa began as Port Natal in of the Thukela/Tugela came be defined as Zululand. the 1820s after the arrival of the early English traders. In the late 1890s, Zululand was annexed to Natal, At the time, however, the traders only occupied the hence the Natal and Zululand colony, which became bay (now Durban). In 1839 what is now KwaZulu- a province after 1910. After the democratic elections Natal became the Natalia Boer Republic. In 1842 the of 1994 in South Africa, the name changed to the British seized it and renamed it the Natal colony. province of KwaZulu -Natal. Maps are attached at the Although many Zulu people settled in Natal, the back of the article.

in KwaZulu-Natal and elsewhere have been Americans and elsewhere are applicable within/at a characterized by migrations, ambiguities of national or continental level. Within Africa, due citizenship, and permeability of territorial boundaries, mainly to migration, communities have always been which opened room for interaction. Using characterized by locally specific elements. The KwaMachi, a chiefdom, in Harding, in the far south KwaMachi chiefdom4 on the border in the south of KwaZulu-Natal, and experiences of people of between KwaZulu-Natal, one of the provinces in African origin in the Americas and elsewhere, this South Africa, and Mpondoland (in some sources essay draws attention to how human settlements were referred to as Pondoland, where the Mpondo people negotiated in the processes of community building. In live), now forming part of the Eastern Cape province the 19th and 20th centuries, ordinary people from of South Africa, (maps attached, pages 12 and 13) is different backgrounds met in geographical settings the best example of intra- racial dynamics where they shared their lives and negotiated social characteristic of African communities. Within and cultural spaces. Social formations developing out KwaMachi people of various cultural backgrounds of such human interactions created a flexible sense of became their own agency in building their identity that reflected incorporation, amalgamation community, irrespective of their origins. and cultural openness. Personal ties, geographical mobility and competing hegemonies produced The European colonial system in Africa, and South complex social movements that were neither Africa in this case, designed systems that, influenced complete nor universal, but subject to challenges and by colonial interests, carried new definitions of reformulations. Based on the analysis and community building processes. For example, the interpretation of available sources, the article British colonial system in South Africa drew up new concludes that KwaMachi residents and people in boundaries that defined people as AmaZulu (Zulu certain parts of the Americas operated in terms of speakers), or Natal Africans, AmaXhosa (Xhosa changing historical forces which involved speakers), or AbeSotho (Sotho speakers). In the south differences, common causes and interdependence in coast of KwaZulu-Natal where the KwaMachi responses to specific conditions. Their experiences chiefdom is located, certain areas were defined as were drawn from broad social, cultural and linguistic “No Man’s Land”. All these labels undermined contexts which cannot be defined within a single African pre-colonial notions of a community that framework. were characterized by free and open settlement. In this paper, using examples in KwaZulu-Natal and Americas, I argue that analyses of community Background to the Study building in Africa and elsewhere should place less emphasis on common generalizations, racial, ethnic, For centuries, people of African origin settled in or cultural because, as case studies in KwaZulu-Natal different parts of Europe, the Americas and and the African Diaspora suggest, these leave some elsewhere, thus forming the African Diaspora. 2 In communities marginalized outside the “official” these continents they established communities scope of history. The meaning of these terms is not characterized by mixed settlement. Community always precise and their definition depends on building 3 operated under a wide range of relations. contexts in which they are applied. People of African Cultures were modified as people incorporated many descent shared certain experiences as “black” people. cultural elements at a local geographical level. However, there are various images of African identity Although the term Diaspora carries global or blackness that are characteristic of any community dimensions, elements of social formations characteristic of the Diaspora communities in the 4 I define chiefdom in this context as a political entity in a rural geographical territory under the 2 Meaning the dispersion of African people from administration of the chief. Chiefdoms are mainly their original homeland/continent into different parts traditional institutions ruled by the chiefs that operate of the globe. in consultation with social structures. These social 3 Community building in this context is defined as a structures include mainly as headmen and traditional process whereby people of different cultural, class, or councils. At a chiefly level, power is hereditary. The ethnic backgrounds come to live together as one chieftaincy itself remains an institution of the ruling community. clan.

that comprises people of African origin within and Africans played a major role in enforcing collective outside Africa. bargaining for political purposes. However, as African Diaspora studies demonstrate, this approach This article is divided into four major parts. The first undermines the role of non- elite people in the part looks at community building among black development and growth of a community in Africa people and other minority groups in the Americas. and elsewhere. Richard Thomas and Gretchen The second part focuses on case studies in KwaZulu- Lemke-Santagelo demonstrate how black people Natal in South Africa. It challenges the manner in from different regions of the United States created a which South African/KwaZulu-Natal historiography common bond among themselves in Detroit has addressed issues related to community building in (Michigan, USA) and East Bay (Berkeley, California, South Africa. The third and fourth parts focus on the USA).7 Other studies show how the Caribbean and colonial settlement and the colonial politics of Mexican immigrants in the United States struggled naming in KwaZulu-Natal; the manner in which the between being an American community and keeping British system in South Africa formulated certain their original ties in the twentieth century in Harlem names that undermined the pre-colonial African (New York, USA).8 Identity can also develop out of human settlement, and the incorrect use of certain the notion of security. In her studies of inter-ethnic labels referring to Africans living in specific regions. relations in Lesotho, Elizabeth Eldredge Studies of social formations among people of African demonstrated how national identity was developed origin in Africa and outside the continent should take and forged in pursuit of security. 9 As the Basotho re- into consideration commonplace themes of migration, emerged in the 1820s, they crossed ethnic boundaries adjustment, interaction, and conflict among groups and forged consolidation through incorporation of whose lives intersect in a geographical setting. migrants from different parts of Southern Africa. Nationalism in this case reflected incorporation, amalgamation and cultural openness. Europe and the African Diaspora Within the African Diaspora and Comparative Black Analysis of broad theories on popular culture and History discourse, race has played a collective role in ethnicity in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas the social make up of the community and should not suggests that community building is/was open to be underestimated.10 However, race alone as a unit of modifications under changing socio-cultural conditions. As David Newbury argues,5 identity traits are not the artifact of the past, but rather locally produced by community residents to consolidate and 7 Thomas, R, Life for us is What we Make of it: negotiate their space in the community. Such scholars Building Black Community in Detroit, 1915-1945, as Leroy Vail, Terence Ranger and William Samarin Indiana University Press, Bloomington and see ethnicity in Southern Africa as an invention of Indianapolis, 1992, Lemke-Santagelo, G, Abiding missionaries, colonial officials, and the African Courage: African American migrant women and the educated elite, known as kholwa (Christian converts) East Bay community, University of South Carolina in Natal, in the twentieth century. 6 Indeed educated Press, Chapel Hill, 1996. 8 Watkins-Owens, I, Blood relations: Caribbean immigrants and the Harlem community, 1900-1930, 5 Newbury, D, Kings and Clans: Ijwi Island and the Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1996. Lake Kivu Rift, 1740-1840, University of Wisconsin 9 Eldredge, EA, A South African Kingdom: The Press, Madison, 1991. pursuit of security in nineteenth century Lesotho, 6 Vail, L, “Ethnicity in Southern African History”, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993. introduction in Vail, L (ed), The Creation of 10 See for example Massey DS and Denton NA, Tribalism in Southern Africa, James Currey, London, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of 1991, Ranger, T, The Invention of Tribalism in the Underclass, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Zimbabwe, Mambo Press, Gweru, Zimbabwe, 1985, and Massachusetts, 1993, Georgakas D and Surkin Samarin, WJ, “Bondjo Ethnicity and Colonial M, Detroit: I do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Imagination”, Canadian Journal of African Studies, Revolution, South End Press, Cambridge, 18, 12, 1984. Also see Newbury, Kings and Clans, Massachusetts, 1998, Capeci DJ Junior and pp. 228-230. Wilkerson M, Layered Violence: The Detroit Riots of

analysis sets limits on the definition of social underclass debate in the United States of America in identification. Heterogeneity, arising from migration the twentieth century is another enticing subject.14 of diverse cultures into a particular region, not only John Hartigan Junior, in his comparative study of reshapes social identities, it also competes against a three sites in Detroit (Michigan) namely Briggs, single cultural unity. These variations illuminate Warrendale and Corktown, reveals Detroit as a city in alternative visions of a national identity within a which the underclass is not uniformly black or multi-racial setting. Comparative black studies in Hispanic. His classification of white Detroiters as Africa and elsewhere identify many forms of ‘Hillbilly’, ‘Gentrifier’, and ‘Racist’ sees whiteness community building that should not be left out when and blackness as less hegemonic concepts.15 People studying race. 11 In Cuba in the 1950s, national negotiated their diversity and manipulated their space identity was adjusted and reconciled in support of locally. All these cases may differ in some respects notions of nationality.12 In Brazil in the twentieth from situations elsewhere. But one significant century, with the emergence of home- grown national framework that they share within the African movements, race consciousness could not be Diaspora discourse is that experiences of people of sustained outside this nationalist framework. Kim African origin inside and outside Africa varied, Butler also gives a comparative analysis of two depending on situations on the ground. These Brazilian cities. Although Afro-Brazilians shared examples also demonstrate the role of ordinary common national ideals as a non-white race, their people in shaping their own lives. Coming from, or experiences differed, depending upon local social and living in, different regions of the Americas, life for historical conditions. In the southern city of Sao them was what they made of it. Community building Paulo, Afro-Brazilians used racial discrimination as was a complex relational social phenomenon.16 The their focus of activism. In Salvador, a city in the north east of Brazil populated predominantly by people of African descent, African cultural Brazilians in Post-Abolition Sao Paulo and Salvador, manifestations gave a better meaning over race.13 The Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey, London, 1998, Thompson, RF, “Kongo Influences on African-American Artistic Culture”, in 1943, University Press of Mississippi, Jackson and Holloway JE (ed), Africanisms in American Culture, London, 1991. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1990, pp. 11 For example Martinez-Alier, V, Marriage, Class, 148-184, and Andrews, GR, Blacks and Whites in and Color in Nineteenth Century Cuba: A Study of Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888-1988, University of Racial Attitudes and Sexual Values in a Slave Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1991. Society, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 14 See for example Sugrue, TJ, The Origin of the 1989, Seed, P, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Post War Colonial Mexico, Conflict over Marriage Choice, Detroit, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New 1574-1821,Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1991, Jersey, 1996, Roediger, D, “Race and Working Class Johnson LL and Lipsett-Rivera S (eds), Sex, Shame, in the United States: Multiple Identities and the and Violence: The Faces of Honor in Colonial Latin Future of Labor History”, International Review of America, University of New Mexico Press, Social History, 38, 1993, 127-43, Zunz, O, The Albuquerque, 1999, Clark-Hine, D, Black Women in Changing Face of Inequality: Urbanization, American History: From Colonial Times Through the Industrial Development, and Immigrants in Detroit, Nineteenth Century, 4 volumes, Carlson, Brooklyn, 1820-1920, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, New York, 1990. 1982, Wilson, WJ, The Truly Disadvantaged: The 12 Perez, LA, On Becoming Cuban: identity, Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy, nationality and culture, University of North Carolina University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1987, Trotter, Press, Chapel Hill, 1999. JW, Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial 13 Butler, KD, “Abolition and the Politics of Identity Proletariat, 1915-1945, University of Illinois Press, in the Afro-Atlantic Diaspora: Toward a Comparative Urbana, 1985. Approach”, in Hine D and McLeod J (eds), Crossing 15 Hartigan J Jr, Racial Situations: Class Boundaries: Comparative History of Black People in Predicaments of Whiteness in Detroit, Princeton Diaspora, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1999. Indianapolis, 1999, pp. 121-133. Also see Butler, 16 See for example Skidmore TE, Black into White: KD, Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won: Afro- Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought, Duke

contact between Europe, Africa and the Americas, as communities remained outside this body of the case of Afro-Brazilians shows, produced scholarship. With the reconstruction of South African circumstances that were local in orientation. These history beginning in the 1970s, academic historians situations could neither be shared nationally within produced works on pre-colonial KwaZulu-Natal.19 Brazil, nor between Afro-Brazilians and African- Still, few attempts were made to closely focus on the Americans or people of African descent living in the development of African communities. Well into the Caribbeans or in Africa. Community building in end of the twentieth century, issues associated with certain areas in KwaZulu-Natal in/and South Africa community building remained on the periphery of followed similar patterns of human settlement. Local South African history. forces shaped the manner in which people negotiated and shared their experiences with one another. Within KwaZulu-Natal, the dynamics of social change in many chiefdoms have been hidden from the regional history of South Africa. This is because Community Building and South African the study of KwaZulu-Natal has generally identified Historiography all Africans in the province as IsiZulu speaking, and thus as AmaZulu/Zulu,20 without investigating Until recently, one of the main problems of South African historiography was its selectivity. An African centered approach that exposed Africans’ everyday role and influence of Orality in Southern African experiences in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, studies. and telling these accounts from their perspectives, 19 Including Guy, J, “Analysis of Pre-colonial was still underdeveloped in orthodox sources. It was Societies in Southern Africa”, Journal of Southern only in the 1960s that African historiography stressed African Studies, Volume 14, 1987-88, Eldredge, EA the centrality of Africans as actors in their own “Delagoa Bay and the Hinterland in the Early history and in shaping their relations with Nineteenth Century: Politics, Trade, Slaves, and Europeans.17 One of the key academic achievements Slave Trading”, in Eldredge EA and Morton F, of the 1960s, and 1970s, was the acknowledgement Slavery in Southern Africa: Captive Labor on the of “non- literate” Africans in the recovery of the past. Dutch Frontier, Boulder, Pietermaritzburg, 1994, This placed oral traditions as raw materials at the Hamilton C and Wright J, “The Making of AmaLala: center of scholarship.18 Nevertheless, many African Ethnicity, Ideology, and Relations of Subordination in the Pre colonial Context, South African Historical Journal, 22, 1990, Hamilton, C “Ideology, Oral Traditions and the Struggle for Power in the Early University Press, Durham, 1993, Winant H and Omi Zulu Kingdom”, unpublished MA Thesis, University M, Racial Formations in the United States: From the of Witwatersrand, 1986, Wright J, “The Dynamics of 1960s to the 1980s, New York, Routledge and Kegan Power and Conflict in the Thukela-Mzimkhulu Paul, 1986, San Juan E Jr, Racial Formations/Critical Region in the late 18th and early 19th centuries: A Transformations: Articulations of Power in Ethnic Critical Reconstruction”, unpublished PhD Thesis, and Racial Studies in the United States, Humanities University of the Witwatersrand, 1990, Wilson M Press, London, 1992. and Thompson L (eds), Oxford History of South 17 Such scholars as Dike, KO, Trade and Politics in Africa, Oxford University Press, London, 1969, and the Niger Delta, 1830-1885, Oxford, 1956, Wright and Hamilton, “Traditions and Shepperson, G, Independent African: John Transformations: The Phongolo-Mzimkhulu Region Chilembwe and the Origins, Setting, and Significance in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries”, in of the Nyasaland Native Uprising of 1915, Edinburg, Duminy A and Guest B (eds), Natal and Zululand 1958, and Vansina J,, Oral Traditions as History, from Earliest Times 10 1910, University of Natal James Currey, London, 1985, emphasized the role of Press, Pietermaritzburg, 1989, and Wright J and African experiences and the African centered Manson A, The Hlubi Chiefdom in Zululand-Natal: A approach in the study of African societies. History, Ladysmith Historical Society, Ladysmith, 18 Vail L and White L, in Power and the Praise 1983. Poem: Southern African Voices in History, 20 The usage of Zulu as a surname, a language and a University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, James name of the kingdom in KwaZulu-Zulu is linked to Curry, London, 1991, give a thorough analysis of the King Shaka Zulu who founded the Zulu kingdom in

different processes which fostered their other of power; boundaries were not completely sealed.24 identities. Other identifications have been made Therefore community building since pre-colonial invisible by this top down perception of African times in KwaZulu-Natal has been affected by various political systems. Before the early nineteenth century, historical events, and its history should be unearthed Zulu was a clan name,21 other groups existed and presented in less relational terms. alongside it. The adoption of Zulu identity by people of diverse origins took different forms. Carolyn In the study of Zulu historiography, Norman Hamilton’s work illiminuates various social and Etherington correctly points out that before the last economic forces and ideological shifts which third of the twentieth century, scholarship did not informed the definition of the Mthethwa identity in admit that there were political structures predating the late 18th century and Zulu citizenship in the early the Shakan era, simply because Zulu had “loomed so 19th century. 22 The history of many chiefdoms in large as to overshadow all rivals”.25 African political KwaZulu-Natal predates political transformations of entities existed before the Shakan era, many of whom the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that have remained invisible in South Africa history. John accompanied the rise of the Zulu kingdom under Wright provides an example of such entities in his King Shaka Zulu. These chiefdoms were never ethnic study of the Hlubi and Thuli groups in KwaZulu- entities. Many of them became conglomerate of Natal.26 As the argument by John Wright and cultural groups that co-existed and altered social Carolyn Hamilton states, 27 before 1840, Zulu identity boundaries that distinguished one group from in what is now KwaZulu-Natal was not stable. Many another. For example, people who formed chiefdoms became vassals of the Zulu kingdom, but KwaMachi were of Zulu, Xhosa, Mpondo, Sotho, were never fully incorporated into the Zulu empire, Griqua and other origins. The linguistic or cultural which left a strong desire for self control.28 G. Mare, combination arising out of these interactions does not C. Walker, P. Karlsholm, D. James, J. Wright and C. always have a name and should thus not be defined within a single ethnic paradigm. Well into the present, the changing demographic, social, political, economic and religious conditions were translated 24 In other words, while dynamics that the colonial into local idioms and operated in a manner that made and apartheid systems brought should not be ordinary residents part of that changing history. The undermined because they introduced significant colonial administration and later homeland system in changes in the history of African communities in South Africa23 operated within certain local relations KwaZulu-Natal, life on the ground since the nineteenth century supported continuity of certain local traditions. 25 Etherington, N, The Great Treks: The Transformation of the Southern African Society, the early 19th century, conquering and incorporating 1815-1854, London, Longman, 2001, p. 331. other entities under himself to form what is now the 26 Wright J and Mason A, The Hlubi Chiefdom in Zulu nation in South Africa. Zululand-Natal: A History, Ladysmith Historical 21 In this study a clan is defined as a group of people Society, Ladysmith, 1983, and Wright, J, “The Thuli sharing family ties, culture, and a line of descent. In and Cele Paramouncies in the coastlands of Natal, KwaZulu- Natal males take surnames from some c.1770-1820”, in Southern African Humanities, 21, common distant ancestors, from whom they claim December 2009. direct descent through male lines. 27 Wright J and Hamilton C, “Ethnicity and Political 22 Hamilton, C, “Ideology, Oral Traditions and the Change before 1840”, in Morrell R (ed), Political Struggle for Power in the Early Zulu Kingdom”, Economy and Identities in KwaZulu-Natal: Historical unpublished MA Thesis, University of and Social Perspectives, University of Natal Press, Witwatersrand, 1986. Pietermaritzburg (South Africa), 1996, pp. 15-32. 23 Under the Homeland System in the 1950s, Africans 28 The Zulu kingdom has not existed without being were grouped according to their languages, for contested. For example, recent media reports example isiZulu speakers in KwaZulu-Natal. suggested that some groups might be claiming their Africans were supposedly holding to distinctive sets status as ‘equal to His Majesty King Zwelithini of practices and common belief systems in each Zulu’. See for example The Natal Witness newspaper, homeland. July 7 2005.

Hamilton29 are some of the scholars to address issues from one another, without regard to pre- colonial of ethnicity and identity, and their broader settlements. Natal became a British colony in the implications for understanding the history of ethnic 1840s. In the late nineteenth century the Natal relations in KwaZulu-Natal. Their argument is that colonial government imposed a strong territorial ethnic identification in KwaZulu-Natal has always distinction that defined Africans who lived beyond been shaped by time, place, and circumstance, and the uMthavuna River as Mpondo. Those beyond the that conflicts between African groups in the late uThukela River in the north, and to the uMzimkhulu twentieth century were not a product of ‘tribal’ River in the south were Zulu. “Zulu people” were issues, but were modern struggles for power and regarded as refugees when found among Natal resources. Mare’s and Mzala’s works demonstrate Africans living in Port Shepstone and Harding.32 The how in the 1970s the “official boundaries” of identity of KwaMachi people nevertheless remained Zuluness were refashioned for political purposes in controversial. This was because of the chiefdom’s KwaZulu-Natal.30 People invoked and mobilized borderland status, being located right on the cultural affinities and affiliations for political Mthavuna border between Natal and Mpondoland purposes.31 Nevertheless, the colonial and apartheid (see map 2, page 13). As late as the 1940s and 1950s, systems in South Africa introduced territorial such labels as Mpondo/Zulu, Mpondo/Bhaca, 33 and boundaries that saw Africans as supposedly Mpondo/Xhosa were used as identifiers in the official belonging to ethnic groups. documents of some KwaMachi residents.34 Some colonial documents refered to them as border natives, Mpondos, Natal Africans, or simply Africans in “No British Colonial System and the Reformulation of Man’s Land”. African community building

The British colonial system in South Africa KwaZulu-Natal Historiography: A “No Man’s introduced socio-economic and political changes that Land” redefined community building. During colonization, Europeans drew up locations that, cutting through The notion of a “No Man’s Land” was itself a African traditional territories, separated Africans colonial design. The name “No Man’s Land” was a definition loosely given to the territory lying between the uMzimkhulu and uMthavuna Rivers by 29 Wright and Hamilton, “Ethnicity and Political Change Before 1840”, Mare G and Walker C, “Evidence for Ethnic Identity of Zulu-Speaking 32 NAB (Natal Provincial Archives), Secretary for Durban Township Residents”, Journal of Southern Native Affairs (SNA) 1/1/157, 1892/681. Theal GM, African Studies, Volume 21, Number 2, June 1995, The Republic of Natal: The Origin of the Present pp. 287-301, Brown, D, “National Belonging and Pondo Tribe, Imperial Treaties with Panda. The Cultural Difference: South Africa and the Global Establishment of the Colony of Natal, Saul Solomon Imaginary”, in Journal of Southern African Studies, and Company Printers, Cape Town, 1886, pp. 1-20, Volume 27, Number 4, December 2001, Kaarsholm P also makes these distinctions in his definition of and James D, “Popular Culture and Democracy in Natal’s boundaries in relation to its neighbors. Port Some Southern Contexts: An Introduction”, Journal Shepstone and Harding towns form a territory of Southern African Studies, Volume 26, 2, June between the uMzimkhulu and uMthavuna rivers (see 2000. maps attached pages 12 and 13). This territory was 30 Mare, G, Brothers Born of Warrior Blood: Politics annexed to British Natal in 1866, after which it came and Ethnicity in South Africa, Johannesburg, South to be called Alfred County. Africa, 1992, and Mzala, Gatsha Buthelezi: Chief 33 Bhaca is a name or term referring to people who with a Double Agenda, Zes Press, London, 1988. ran away, ‘deserters’ or ‘hiders’, from King Shaka 31 See for example Marks, S, in “Patriotism, Zulu’s rule, those who were either driven out of what Patriarchy and Purity: Natal and the Politics of Zulu became Zululand, or refused to submit to him. The Ethnic Consciousness”, in Vail, L, (ed), The Creation word Bhaca means to desert or to hide. of Tribalism in Southern Africa, University of 34 Interview with Councilor Madiya and headman California Press, Los Angeles and Berkeley, 1991, Zakuza, March 2003, Amba, KwaMachi. Madiya and Chapter 7. Zakuza are community officials.

Europeans before it was annexed to Natal in the life had in all cases been destroyed, chiefs had 1860s, after which the territory came to be called been slain, customs cast aside. The consequent Alfred County. The name “No Man’s Land” is ignorance of tribal origins, indiscriminate mating, evident in earlier studies on Natal.35 A. T. Bryant and scrambling over insufficient portions of land must be held as casual factors in the patchwork maintains that although there were “tribes” 36 living distribution of many of present day tribes of there, none of them had permanently occupied the 37 Natal territory. This explains why, when the first Europeans arrived prior to its annexation, the territory was called “No Man’s Land”. Bryant’s and Reader’s works were part of The name may have different meanings for both historiography that was influenced by the writings of settler and missionary historians of the nineteenth Africans and Europeans. “No Man’s Land”, from a 38 European settler’s or colonizer’s point of view, century. These writers saw Africans in general as carries a specific meaning. It may be linked to settler mere objects in history. Records that were written by historiography of the nineteenth century that certain Europeans in Port Shepstone and Harding caricatured Shaka Zulu, the founder of the Zulu reflect this mentality about the African inhabitants of kingdom, as a blood-thirsty monster who allegedly the county. One of these Europeans was Mr. C. killed people and left many spaces “empty”, a Karlson, a biochemist by profession, and an amateur justification for European settlement. “No Man’s historian and research expert in his spare time. In the Land” also raises the whole question of how colonial 1950s he gathered some information and wrote a maps were “manufactured” and for what purposes. general history of Port Shepstone. He contributed The Cape and Natal colonial governments in what many anecdotes from his research among old became South Africa in 1910 defined the territory newspapers, court records, and the Natal archives. between the uMzimkhulu and uMthavuna Rivers as a Karlson’s writings, including his letters of correspondence with other white families/members in place without law and order. Because the territory 39 was located between Natal and Cape colonies but Port Shepstone, only covered European settlements forming no part of these states, it was defined as a in Port Shepstone and Harding. place that “belonged to nobody”. Between the 1850s and 1860s the notion of a “No Man’s Land” justified The settler attitude apparent in Karlson’s research is Natal’s expansion into the territory. Hence ‘No also reflected in the Natal south coast white Man’s Land’ could have been defined as such newspapers, notably the South Coast Herald and because Europeans had, until the 1860s, not yet Southern Review, established in the late 1940s. Some of the newspaper reports were based on his “discovered” the area. In 1966, Reader defined “No 40 Man’s Land” as; research. In such reports Africans were rarely mentioned only in passing, being referred to as Displaced persons’ camp without the service of a “natives” who greeted the first Europeans with a camp commandant. Within its borders thousands warm welcome and provided them with food and of destitute tribesmen wandered hopelessly. Clan

35 For example Bryant AT, Olden Times in Zululand and Natal: Containing earlier Political History of the 37 Reader DH, Zulu Tribe in Transition, Manchester East-Nguni clans, Longmans, London, 1929. Also University Press, Manchester, 1966, pp. 7-8 see Hammond-Tooke WD, The Bantu Speaking 38 Wright, J, “Political Transformations in the Peoples of Southern Africa, Routledge, London, Thukela-Mzimkhulu Region in the late Eighteenth 1974. and Early Nineteenth Centuries”, in Hamilton C, (ed), 36 The term ‘tribe’ has been attacked as dysfunctional The Mfecane Aftermath: Reconstructive Debates in in Southern African historiography. Africans in Southern African History, Witwatersrand University Southern Africa were perceived as divided into Press, Johannesburg, 1995, p. 163. smaller distinct groups known as ‘tribes’. This 39 NAB, Accession Number 1492, newspaper colonial definition helped to facilitate the ‘divide and clippings, undated, “History of the South Coast of rule’ policy in South Africa, the Homeland System, Natal”. according to which Africans were supposedly 40 Ibid, The South Coast Herald newspaper, October separated along language and thus ‘tribal’ lines. 12 1951.

refreshments. 41 In many instances, stories about moved down from the north. Names like Africans of the south coast of Natal give a reader Gun Drift provide a clue to this way of life44 negative impressions. South Africans of Norwegian descent (many of whom have lived in Port Shepstone to the present), claimed in their records that when the first Norwegian settlers arrived in Port Shepstone in One may borrow David Beach’s words, in his study 1882, Duka Fynn, the son of Henry Francis Fynn,42 “ of Zimbabwe, that in general Europeans in Africa staged a war with 400 Zulus as a welcome. Dressed were not interested in the possibility that Africans in full war regalia, with spears and cow hide shields, had a historical past of their own. Until about the they made a terrifying impression on the new comers early 1960s, there was a general belief that only the and they came down with the cries, began stamping history of Europeans in Africa mattered.45 In cases back and forth, until sand and dust were blowing in a where Africans appeared in written records, the cloud”. 43 Such one sided records are still used in the picture was not always inviting. The definition of the present. On the Internet of today, the reader can find, territory as a “No Man’s Land” was therefore not a for instance, coincidence. Since the territory formed no part of a “civilized” British colony, the mentality of disorder in a “No Man’s Land” remained unquestioned in The Harding area, once known as ‘No official documents. As this study shows, although Man’s Land’, was inhibited by Xhosa and settler writers claimed that for centuries before Pondo people long before the arrival of European settlement the area where KwaMachi and European settlers. Legend has it that the first other chiefdoms were established was unoccupied, European to put down roots was a sailor Africans in fact occupied it.46 who was wrecked off the Pondoland coast in

1782. In those days it was a wild, untamed However, the notion of a “No Man’s Land” may not land, with hunters and traders roaming the necessarily be viewed negatively by certain African hills and skirmishes taking place between groups. The KwaMachi ruling house claims that they the local tribes, including the Zulus who and their adherents were the first group to establish a stable chiefdom known as KwaMachi between the uMthavuna and uMzimkhulu Rivers in the pre- colonial era. The idea of occupying a vast space that was almost “empty”, except for a few fluid groups that occupied it, reinforces a sense of a “No Man’s Land”. The KwaMachi leadership and their adherents 41 NAB, Accession Number 665, Reference Number would emphasize it to justify their rights to land and 19, W. J. Jackson, “History of the Borough of Port their political authority in the southwest of KwaZulu- Shepstone: For the Van Riebeeck Festivities, Natal that predates the rise of the Zulu kingdom. February 1952”, an extract of History Masters Thesis, What all this means is that the British colonial University of South Africa, pp. 1-2. system, and European settlement, in Natal came up 42 Henry Francis Fynn is one of the earliest English with labels that suited colonial interests and traders who arrived in what became the Natal colony manipulated the manner in which, on paper, contacts in the 1820s. Following political transformations between Europeans and Africans in southern after the rise of Shaka Zulu, the founder of the Zulu KwaZulu-Natal were defined in order to justify Kingdom in the 1820s, Henry Francis Fynn and his colonial occupation in the region. However, brother Frank Fynn established their own chiefdoms in the south coast of KwaZulu-Natal. The name of Henry Francis Fynn’s chiefdom was Nsimbini. 44 South Coast Web for Tourist Industry, 43 Halland AA and Kjonstad I, (translated by Margate.co.za- South Coast, KwaZulu Natal, South Andreasen AHE and Halland A) The Norwegian Africa, reviewed May 2004 and September 2008. Settlers, Marburg, Natal, 1882: Coinciding with the 45 Beach, D, The Shona and their Neighbors, 50th Jubilee of Landing of Settlers on the 29th of Blackwell, Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, Ma, 1994, August 1882, published by the Marburg Norwegian pp. 10-11. Church, printed by the South Coast Herald (PTY, 46 Camp BE, The History of the District of Alfred, a LTD) Port Shepstone, 1932, p. 16. pamphlet, n. p. d., 1964, p. 3.

Europeans did not always have overall control over different cultures, is underdeveloped. Studies how Africans built their own communities at a local nevertheless suggest that there were frontier level. Cross frontier human settlements grew as processes in pre-colonial Africa. 49 The contact people of different backgrounds came to live between the indigenous Khoisan peoples of Southern together, creating frontier communities. Because of Africa and migrant Bantu-speaking farmers who its geographical position, the KwaMachi community entered the region in the early AD centuries is a good developed into a Mpondo/Zulu frontier community in example. 50 In the Americas, as studies by Thomas, which linguistic and cultural affiliations took place, Lemke-Santagelo and Watkins-Owens show, cultural creating a negotiated sense of belonging in which contacts between black people of varying bonds of kinship were refashioned at a local level. backgrounds also took place.

Records show that the rural areas of the present Port The Black Frontier Communities Shepstone and Harding were from the beginning open to mixed settlements. Place names within the The study of frontier communities in South Africa territory partly demonstrate this. For example, next to has focussed mainly on black-white frontiers. Such Port Shepstone is a village called Nobamba. prominent scholars as Martin Legassick, Robert Ross, Nobamba is the name of a place presently known as Christopher Saunders, Hermann Giliomee, Richard Weenen in Zululand. It was given to the kraal of a Elphick, and Jeff Peires published impressive works brother of King Cetshwayo Zulu, successor to King on interactions between various racial groups in Dingane Zulu (who succeeded King Shaka Zulu). South Africa. Leonard Thompson and Howard Lamar Chief Duka Fynn adopted the name for his kraal on define a frontier as “a territory or zone of inter- the Bhobhoyi area, near Port Shepstone. Legends say penetration between two previously distinct that Duka Fynn adopted this name because the societies”. 47 In any given region, the frontier, a zone Fynns’ chiefdoms comprised people who were of interaction, “opened” when the “intrusive society” defined as “stragglers” from the Zulu kingdom.51 arrived, and “closed” when a single political authority established hegemony over that space. Isandlundlu, a bush clad in Port Edward, a small town further south from Port Shepstone, is believed Thompson and Lamar published a comparative to have been a scene of massacre of AmaMpondo analysis of this interaction between America and who lived there at the hands of Shaka’s army in South Africa.48 The focus was on the interaction 1827.52 Isandlundlu is now within the KwaZulu Natal between indigenous groups and “intrusive” west, eg province. There are African villages known as between black South Africans or Native Americans Ganyaza and Mntengwane in Port Shepstone. and Europeans. Studies on contacts between Ganyaza is one of the earliest leaders from Zululand Europeans and Africans/Americas overshadowed who asked for political asylum from Faku, the king of other pre-colonial contacts, colonial/pre-colonial, Mpondoland, and settled in the present Port between people of the same race but different cultural Shepstone. Mntengwane was the son of backgrounds. The historiography of a “black Ngqungqushe, Faku’s son. Legends say that frontier”, an interaction between African groups of Mntengwane had a kraal there and the village was named after him. The existence of Zulu and Mpondo

47 Thompson L and Lamar H (eds), The Frontier in History: North America and Southern Africa 49 Thompson and Lamar, “Comparative Frontier Compared, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1981, Outlook”, in Thompson and Lamar, The Frontier in p. 7. History. 48 See Legassick, M, “ The Griqua, the Sotho- 50 See for example Elphick R and Malherbe VC, “The Tswana, and the Missionaries, 1780-1840: The Cape Population”, in Elphick and Giliomee, The Politics of a Frontier Zone”, PhD dissertation, Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1640. University of California, Los Angeles, 1970, and the 51 Interview with Mbanjwa, May 2003, Bhobhoyi, essays in Elphick R and Giliomee H (eds), The Port Shepstone. Mr Mbanjwa is a community resident Shaping of a South African Society, 1652-1840, in Bhobhoyi. Wesleyan University Press, Connecticut, 1989, 52 Campbell Collections (KCM), Durban. C. H. Thompson and Lamar, The Frontier in History. Lugg, “Places of Interest in Natal and Zululand”.

names suggest that there were mixed settlements of apartheid systems did not change the basic social people of Zulu and Mpondo origins in the areas organization of the chiefdom. They tapped into such between the uMzimkhulu and uMthavuna Rivers. local relations, the strength of which gave Africans Ndamase refers to Faku’s Mpondoland as ikhaya le an opportunity to reject, incorporate, modify, and zizwe (home of the nations) where ‘AmaXolo, redefine borrowed practices in terms of their local AmaBhaca, Adam Kok’s Griquas, and others lived’.53 idioms. The KwaMachi chiefdom continued to exist Community building was therefore a multifaceted as “an island” between mainly Zululand and struggle in which bonds of patronage were negotiated Mpondoland, as the quotation suggests. KwaMachi in a broad range of social interactions. Such has continued to accommodate people to the present borderland entities as KwaMachi, that have for through, for examples, marriages. Therefore, a new centuries housed people of various backgrounds, base line for studying African communities should be should be seen as grounds for interaction between explored; the exploration of “black frontier” people of varying backgrounds. Adaptation and communities in South African historiography. continuity of different multicultural images, and their implication for community building should be explored. These themes are illustrated in some of the Conclusion views from KwaMachi. One of my informants stated that “in history, we have never known a thing that The study of the African Diaspora suggests that connects KwaMachi with either KwaZulu or social formations are characterized by specific Mpondoland. KwaMachi was like an island in a elements in each community. Not a single unit of way”.54 Being a borderland chiefdom, KwaMachi has analysis should be used to analyze social formations maintained flexible linguistic and cultural affiliations. among people of African origin living inside and For example, KwaMachi people would be regarded outside Africa. The colonial administration created as AmaMpondo because of a dialect that they speak, artificial groupings that, while local in origin, were and also because of certain cultural elements that they nevertheless complex to conform to a single borrowed from AmaMpondo (people from collective. 57 Generally regional differences within Mpondoland), their neighbors. The interaction of KwaZulu Natal and elsewhere, for example Brazil, different speech communities resulted in the created what might be called “black ethnic invention of new words. These are local creations, heterogeneity” 58 or, to borrow E. Lewis’s words, born out of changes in social relations and political “living and working in a world of overlapping structures. 55 With all these influences, entities forged coherence to validate incorporation into KwaMachi. KwaMachi thus demonstrates a complex social formation accompanying migration and resettlement, characteristic of a frontier community. Such elements Izindaba Zabantu newspapers, 1911 and 1912, TSS, are present in the history of many other entities in Posted into Notebook, and KCM 31439, Shepstone KwaZulu-Natal and elsewhere.56 The colonial and Papers, File 12, “List of Zulu Tribes and Their History”. 57 Vansina, J, Paths in the Rain Forests: Towards a 53 Ndamase VP, AmaMpondo: Ibali NeNtlalo, History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa, Lovedale, 1930s, pp 22-27. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1990, pp. 54 Interview with J Ngesi, July 2003, 19-21. Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Mr Ngesi was born in 58 In Watkins- Owens, I, Blood Relations: Caribbean KwaMachi. Immigrants and the Harlem Community, 1900-1930, 55 See Comaroff, J, Body of power, spirit of Watkins-Owens emphasizes the black cultural milieu resistance The culture and history of a South African emanating from a complex interaction of African people, Univeristy of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1985, Americans and African Caribbean communities in the and Schoenbrun DL, A green place, a good place : Harlem during the first decades of the twentieth Agrarian change, gender, and social identity in the century. These groups came together to form a new Great Lakes region to the 15th century, Heinemann, community characterized by cultural controversies 1998. and sometimes conflicts. The divergence of cultures 56 KCM, A. T. Bryant Collections, “Articles on the challenged old interpretations of race for white Zulu Tribes”, Volume I, News Cuttings from Americans and native- born blacks.

diasporas”.59 Communities are products of their own histories. Discourses of identity are developed and changed through shifting historical time. 60 Conclusions should be drawn from experiences, actions and views of ordinary people themselves and those of their predecessors. Homogenization of national or cultural identity does not operate in every human settlement. In some cases identities are negotiated and refashioned, depending on the conditions on the ground.

Map 1: Showing KwaZulu-Natal Province

59 Lewis, E, “To Turn on a Pivot: Writing African Americans into a History of Overlapping Diasporas”, in Clark Hine and McLeod (eds), Crossing Boundaries, pp. 3-32. 60 Laclau, E, “Universalism, Particularism, and the Question of Identity”, in Wilmsen and McAllister, The Politics of Difference: Ethnic Premises in a World of Power, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1996.

Map 2: KwaMachi and other chiefdoms in the district of Harding

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