Producing Sarhili: the colonial archive and the biographical limits of writing a history of a nineteenth century Xhosa king. Candidate: Virgil Charles Slade A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Magister Artium in the Department of History, University of the Western Cape. Date Submitted: 30 August 2009 Plagiarism Declaration I, the undersigned, declare that ……….. is my own work, that it has not submitted for any degree or examination at any other university, and that all the sources I have used or quoted have been indicated and acknowledged by complete references. Date Virgil Charles Slade ii Contents Plagiarism Declaration……………………………………………………....ii Contents…………………………………………………………………….iii Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………iv Photographs………………………………………………………………..viii Introduction – The Last King of the amaXhosa……………………..1 Chapter One – How a Wanderer Became a King…………………..18 Chapter Two - War and Power……………………………………..37 Chapter Three- The Suicide of the amaXhosa………………………55 Chapter Four- The Politics of the Margin………………………….74 Chapter Five- The Beginning of the End…………………………115 Chapter Six- Re-Presenting Sarhili………………………………149 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………182 Selected Bibliography……………………………………………………..188 iii Acknowledgement Like the subject of this dissertation, I often found myself trapped in very unexpected ways and there is no way that I would have emerged from this project with any degree of success if it were not for the contributions many different people made to this project throughout its three year lifespan. I think that I should start my words of thanks by mentioning Professor Andrew Bank for the pragmatic manner in which he help me formulate often chaotic ideas into coherent thoughts that translated into a proposal that was passed the first time around by the powers that be. Andrew, you stepped in when my supervisor was away on sabbatical and my morale was at its lowest ebb. For this I express my heart-felt gratitude. I would probably not have completed the dissertation if it had not been for your patience and guidance. Thank you. To Janine Brandt and Jane Schmidt – you guys are always there for me. Often I convert fairly regulatory procedures into moments of crisis for a variety of reasons but you do not only help me with kindness but also with a generosity of spirit. I hope that this time around that you will attend my graduation celebrations so I can show you off to my family. My appreciation knows no bounds. To the UWC History Department as a whole I owe a debt of gratitude. Every member of the department has contributed in some way to my academic development but I feel it iv would be remiss of me not to single out Ciraj Rassool, Patricia Hayes and Nicky Rousseau for special mention. Although not directly involved with this thesis, these teachers been instrumental in my development and always have been a source of encouragement. For this I am most grateful. I owe a special word of thanks to everyone involved in the research trip I undertook to the Eastern Cape in September of 2007. Most of the trip we stayed at the Haven and I want to express my gratitude to the staff for all their efforts. We were lucky enough to meet with one of the community leaders, Kuzile Juza. Juza gave us an invaluable insight into the Xhosa oral tradition in the Dwesa-Cebe area as well as the problems this rural region was enduring. Thank you for generosity Kuzile. You are an inspiration to your community. I also spent time at the Cory Library that was vital to my research. I want to use this opportunity to thank Messrs. Victor Gacula and Jackson Vena for the way they took me in and allowed me access to all the resources at their disposal. They looked after me like I was one of their own students. Gents, thank you very much. The trip would not have been the same if it were not for the intellectual capital of Khayalethu Mdudumane. He helped us with translation issues and added immense value to the trip with his unfailing humour and being a soundboard for our ideas. Dalasile, you are the man, the man in blue! I spent nearly seven months at the National Archives in Cape Town. I want to express my appreciation to all the staff at this institution, with a special mention to Kenny. Thank you v for always being prepared to go the extra mile . I know I owe you a lunch, a date I plan to keep in the near future. I realise that my passion for my subject matter must have made laborious reading at times so I want to firstly, sympathise with my external examiners Profs. Alan Kirkaldy and Jacob Tropp for having to wade their way through this dissertation. Secondly, I want to thank them for their fair and insightful evaluations of my thesis. I appreciate that they have conducted such a close reading of my work and were so gentle in their critique. This thesis almost failed to see the light of day due to a virus a picked up on my machine playing online poker. The lesson has been learnt and I will confine my poker exploits to the actual table. However, even though I lost everything from my laptop, the various hard copies I had made throughout its lifespan were converted into an electronic once again. Being a bona fide technophobe, I have no idea of what that entailed so you can imagine my gratitude to my sister, Lana Daniels, and my good friend at the Mayibuye Archive, Andre Mohammed for restoring my thesis to its electronic form. Thank you. To my supervisor Prof. Premesh Lalu- I think of you as more than a mentor, I think of you as a friend. This project had the most innocuous of starts in your office in 2005 while I was still completing my Honour’s degree. It seems appropriate that you are once again in Minnesota at the conclusion of this project, the same place you were when it started. Thank you for the time you have invested in this thesis reading endless draughts, vi lamenting the ‘Virgilisms’ and always prepared to serve as a sieve for my ideas. Premesh, you are a legend. My parents, Ivan and Sybil Slade, you remain the stability upon which I am able to do what I do. Words could never do justice to the appreciation I feel for what you do for me. I could never repay you for what you do but know that I am thankful. I love you. To my partner, Danielle Abrahams- you probably had to endure the most this last three years. You have ridden the crest of every wave with me and felt the lowest trough of the journey that was this dissertation. You had to put up with my frustration and always tried to be positive through the process. I know that you had to read about things that you have no interest in but you did it anyway. You remained interested and always endeavoured to motivate and encourage me. I do not how to say thank you enough. Love, always. Lastly, to my son Nicholas: now for number four my boy! You inspire me more than I thought possible before you came into life. As always, everything I do, I do it for you. I love you my boy. vii Photograph 1 viii Photograph 2 ix Photograph 3 x Photograph 4 xi Photograph 5 xii Photograph 6 xiii Photograph 7 xiv Photograph 8 xv Introduction- The Last King of the amaXhosa 1 ‘Kreli’s2 [Sarhili’s] influence over the AmaXhosa is such, that place him where you will, he is able to make himself felt as if he was actually in the midst of them. For fifty years Kreli has stood up against the advancing tide and battled with it. The wars he has bravely fought, his personal hair breadth escapes, his wisdom and eloquence in council and his consummate skill in diplomacy cling to him like moss to a tree about the old chieftain, and make of him, even in adversity, the central figure of the Kaffir political stage3.’ This is the manner in which I first encountered the ambiguous figure of the Xhosa chief, Sarhili, filtered from the colonial archive. The description of Sarhili is drawn from a colonial correspondence by Bomvanaland magistrate W. E. Stanford that points to long prehistory of the last paramount chief of the Xhosa as he tried to withstand the onslaught of British colonialism. Stanford draws our attention to the figure of Sarhili who is portrayed in the colonial archive in disparate characterisations that catapulted the king to the most important person on the Xhosa political stage. Even when the Xhosa paramount was outmanouvred politically and utterly obliterated militarily, no amount of colonial intervention seemed to displace him from the centre of the Eastern Cape political stage. The ambiguous nature of the Xhosa chief as he is depicted in the colonial archive is related very directly in the way that he enters and exits this archive. There is so much controversy that surrounds the last paramount chief of the Xhosa that even his birth date 1 Whereas it can be argued that a royal lineage has continued after the death of Sarhili, he was the last paramount chief of the Xhosa who could, for the most part of his life, make decisions that were independent of colonial intervention. 2 ‘Kreli’ is the name by which Sarhili is referred to in the colonial correspondence letters. 3 G. 19-, 1886, p. 9: Stanford’s Memo, 19 May 1885. 1 is shrouded in controversy.4 The year of his birth is a source of much uncertainty, even among subsequent historians who have consul ted the same colonial sources.