Memory, Identity and Inheritance Amongst Zululand Traders

Memory, identity and inheritance amongst Zululand traders

Much of the contemporary lives of Zululand traders is reliant on memory and nostalgia, and the legacy of their past perpetuates not only orally and in written form, but also in practice. Their past thus bleeds through to their contemporary lives. History and anthropology merge in the assimilation of interpreting how people see their lives and understand their legacy. It is thus that these ‘voorloper’ histories construct who they are and the manner in which they approach their worlds. This paper is part of a greater investigation which melds the architecture of the trading store, the social histories of the Zululand traders and their various networks, and anthropology in the creation of identity through memory and nostalgia.

Introduction assisted in the creation of their identity, The Zululand traders identify themselves and contributes to a larger study that syn- as such, even if they are no longer trad- thesises social and material culture and ing. Jean Aadnesgaard is one of many history. informants who say that ‘trading is in the blood’, yet she has not effectively traded The reality and non-reality of for thirty years. Besides being experiential, nostalgia and memory much of this comes from the generational ‘We had a good time’ is a phrase constantly responsibilities that being ‘in trade’ has reiterated by the traders still trading, and inculcated, and the stories of trade, located by those who stopped many years ago. It within the social remoteness of Zululand is a statement about their pasts which are are reinforced by stories and memories of generally perceived as difficult times, and close-knit ties. The focus of this paper is is located in relative contrast to the com- the manner in which memory and stories fortable, affluent lives that they are living of some of the white traders in Zululand today. For many, trading is the stuff of

Mahommed’s Store at Ahrens memory, so strong that it creates identity. ‘combatative’ manner rather than chal- The good times of trading are remembered, lenging, interrogating what they perceive and nostalgia is, on the surface, a primary as a cultural phenomenon that chooses to response to their pasts.1 represent the present through ‘falsification Given that most of these people no lon- of the past’. Nostalgia, they established, ger trade, nostalgia is the vehicle for these was something rooted in the medieval traders’ presentation of their lives. At the period, and a large part of the ethos behind same time nostalgia is that which causes Victorian landscapes.2 other people to remember minute details Memory has different roots. Given that of the trading stores without pictographic much memory is in narrative or narrative reference. In The imagined past – history textual form, the difficulties of capturing and nostalgia Christopher Shaw notes that the senses of memories form contentious ‘Of all the ways of using history, nostalgia discussion.3 A malleable personal memory is the most general, looks the most inno- is described by Julian Thomas as cent, and is perhaps the most dangerous.’ Memory is not the true record of past (Shaw in Shaw & Chase 1989: 1) Nostalgia events but a kind of text which is worked alludes to the romanticisation of elements upon in the creation of meaning. Identities of the past, embracing a comfort blanket are continually crafted and re-crafted out which forgets the personal, economic, of memory, rather than being fixed by social and political challenges which were the real course of past events… (Thomas faced at the time. ‘The sick man of Europe 1996 in Bender & Winer 2001: 4) had taken to his bed, dreaming of a child- Identity is therefore, for Thomas, con- hood that he had never had, regressing textually legitimated by the reconstitution into a series of fictitious and cloudless of memories. infantile summers.’ (Ibid 1989: 1). The Maurice Bloch expands on this, in part authors prefer to address nostalgia in a as a means to understand how memory and

80 Memory, identity and inheritance amongst Zululand traders time may be constructed from a variety of However, at the same time, he is criti- different types or remembering. (Bloch cal of singular interpretations of group 1998) He says simply, that we use stories to practice, finding it ‘totally unacceptable’ make sense of the world we live in and that that the examination of narratives reveals it is the characteristics of these stories that a generalised concept of the mechanisms define and construct our worlds and how of the functioning of other people’s worlds. we perceive ourselves in them. Time and (Bloch 1998: 102) space he uses specifically, as examining Narratives, then, in the interpreting and the representations of both the past and the presenting of the primary sources of Zu- present reveals the parameters of consid- luland traders, are potentially malleable in ered experience. (Bloch 1998: 100) the direction of the topic, and exist on both Bloch also states strongly that narratives personal and group/communal levels. within which people consider themselves It is not the nature of the memory that to act are bound to that person and ques- is important here, nor a deep investigation tioning the participation within that narra- into the source of the memory, but rather tive is both arrogant and imposing, what he that stand-alone memories have their own calls, an ‘intellectual imperialism’. (Bloch tales which contribute to the construction 1998: 101) of identity and define the lives of the Zu- Thus, a distanced view has to be em- luland traders. ployed in reading these texts, as events that precipitated the memory have hooks I remember when…. on which the memory is pegged. In her beautiful home overlooking indig- These individual memories or ways of enous bush and the Indian Ocean, Ursula creating memory are then extended to a Morrison puts the jam tin of roses that I greater social interpretation by Paul Con- have bought for her into water, and in- nerton in his monograph ‘How Societies troduces her husband Jimmy, wheelchair Remember’. bound and mute after a massive stroke Here he notes that in the case of social/ some time before. She tells a much told collective memory story, reinforced in the iteration and rela- images of the past commonly legitimate tion of other’s histories and memories. In the present social order. It is an implicit 1918, she says, David Brodie, a partner rule that participants in any social order in a trading firm named G.A. Challis & must presuppose a shared memory. Co. was looking for a young man to take To the extent that their memories of a over from Challis. The latter had returned society’s past diverge, to that extent its from war with bad shell-shock and was members can share neither experiences not able to continue running the shop nor assumptions. (Connerton 1991: 3) which they owned at Makakatana, known In the collective sense Bloch, too, main- as ‘Lake Store’. Both Challis and Brodie tains that this has unifying creativity in that were ex-Natal Government Policemen. In ‘the phenomenological maintenance or addition, Brodie travelled a lot and needed otherwise of past states is, in real circum- a reliable person to look after the shop in stances, largely determined by history and his absence. At the time, ‘Jock’ Morrison, people’s view of themselves in history and Jimmy’s father, was eighteen and working hence, via notions of persons and places in Mtubatuba, and had to borrow money and various views of ethics and intentions from a family friend to be able to enter (Bloch 1998: 69). into this partnership. Trading suited him

81 Memory, identity and inheritance amongst Zululand traders and it was not long before he opened a end of World War 2 and customers would store at Maphosa when he got married, queue for their daily rations of brown as well as at the railhead at Nyalazi and sugar as this item was necessary for the at Hluhluwe. brewing of home-made liquor. Black people were not permitted to buy ‘white Jock Morrison died at the end of the liquor’ at that time so concocted and sold 1930s. His son Jimmy had gone off to their own version of moonshine as well war, serving in the South African Air as tapping the ilala palm to make palm Force, whilst his mother, characteristi- wine, a potent liquor. cally, continued to run the family store at St Lucia. Maphosa Store was being run James married Ursula in 1949. She had by an uncle who had built it into a viable grown up on a farm at Ballito, and had at- concern whilst keeping the other stores tended boarding school at Eshowe. Thus at Makakatana, Nyalazi and Hluhluwe she was not really thrown into a totally running. Jimmy Morrison was demobbed foreign environment when she moved and returned to South Africa, studying up to the wild, remote Makakatana in the accountancy before returning to Zululand 1950s where, she tells, the only drinkable and re-entering the store business. Ursula water came from rainwater tanks and 4 Morrison takes up the story. there was no electricity and no telephone. Light came from paraffin-fired Coleman The businesses were not in good shape, lamps. only one of the three shops showing The railhead may have reached Som- a fair return, and the buildings, which were built of wood and iron, needing khele by 1903, meaning that one could replacement. There were shortages of catch the train, but nevertheless it was goods for a number of years after the still quite a trip to get to the siding at Nyalazi.

Esikeni Store past Riverside

82 Memory, identity and inheritance amongst Zululand traders

She remembers that fresh milk was my storeroom at the moment, but I try provided originally by a local man named and keep it tidy. Those bins over there are Mncube at the time when they took over actually ration bins which were dropped the running of the store, but as the store out of DC 10s when we were in Angola. allotment provided for a grazing area they Shelves are piled high with all of Jimmy soon got their own cows.5 She paled when Morrison’s records. There are the boxes of asked whether they slaughtered for meat, papers dealing with staffing at the stores, and replied that they had slaughtered only others documenting Morrison’s involve- once. An old man named Maphosa would ment with the Rural Licensing Boards walk from Makakatana Store to Nyalazi and the Zululand Chamber of Commerce Store at the railhead every morning to col- and files and ledgers containing all the lect two sacks of bread. These stores, she company’s accounts. A perfect incarcera- says, stocked everything from a ‘pin to a tion of memory. plough’. She remembers the complexity of All is exactly how it was when we closed. the relationship between the customer and Here are the rods that we hung cloth the storekeeper as being totally different from, look at these fish hooks – they are from other trading relationships and over the original ones, all for five cents each. the counter service was particularly impor- I don’t think that I would do anything tant. They also served as a postal agency. about the store, but the roof does need The post arrived three times a week, she a good fix. says, and was collected from Nyalazi by an We peer up through the gloom to the African man on foot, carrying the canvas ceiling where tell-tale signs of water and post bag on a stick on one shoulder and rot show lack of maintenance. Hugh and a knobkerrie and an assegai in the other Leanne’s house is set in a large garden, hand. In operating this postal service, they with remote control and electrified fence had to send telegrams for customers, and in the middle of the forest with a view out receive registered mail for families of across Lake St Lucia. Outside the gates migrant workers. This meant that they had you see warthogs, and, if you are lucky, to identify officially every recipient of the a rhino or two. Hugh and Leanne run the registered letters, which meant knowing luxury Makakatana Lodge, some kilo- your customers by face and name. She metres through the thickly forested sand also remembers that traders, operating dunes. Through the vagaries of fortune within a telephone exchange system, and in the 1930s, Jimmy Morrison’s father a party line (which they had until the late acquired the land freehold, an unusual 1980s), had to dial the numbers for their situation for traders on trading allotments, customers, most of whom could not read especially in Zululand. Hugh declares: ‘We or write, as well as facilitate some phone keep way out of the goings on at the Lodge calls. In addition, she remembers offering – foreign visitors just have no respect for legal advice, as well as holding and man- personal space’. aging accounts. Hugh Morrison is a child of a different Her son Hugh and his family live next period of trading. door to the old store at Makakatana. Leanne’s father was a rep for Spar or OK In February 1949, James married Ursula or something and he always asks to look Rogers and their first son John was born at the store, with fond memories. All of in December of that year to be followed this is exactly how it was. I am afraid it is by four more sons and a daughter6 –

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and the family history, Ursula Morrison creates a linear story from a collection of different happenings. Bloch elaborates, suggesting ‘that a narrative is not stored as a narrative but as a complex re-representation of a sequence of events like the sequence of events that happen to oneself.’ (Bloch 1998: 122) Add- ing inference, such as Pamela crying into her porridge, fleshes out the story and it is this which aids memory – making sense of the narrative includes being able to contextualise it in a greater picture. (Bloch 1998: 123) Some voices and memories Map of Zululand showing some trading are immortalised, and their en- sites discussed (Author) durance is largely due to the written word. The late Roy Rutherfoord’s Barry, Pamela, Bruce, Keith and Hugh. Fortunately they were a reasonably memories are captured in his memoirs. He healthy bunch because the nearest remembered as a boy driving in a Willys doctor was 23 miles away over rough dirt Overland motorcar with his parents to take roads. All the children grew up speaking up the Ndumu Store. English and Zulu and Hugh spoke only From Othobothini we travelled on an Zulu until he was three. Makakatana is a ill defined old wagon track that led to lovely place for children, especially the Ndumu. At times we had to get out to boys, who started fishing at a young age walk to higher ground in order to see but the one big drawback, is the distance where the track continued. We proceeded from schools. There was no boarding on, and duly arrived at the banks of the facility at Mtubatuba so all ended up at Ingwavuma River, a spot approximately 7 Eshowe School which is about a two- two kilometres from Ndumu store. The hour journey away. Pamela still tells of river was flowing strongly and was quite crying into her porridge when she was impossible to cross by car. There was a sent away at the age of five-and-a-half small pont which the natives managed 8 years! to pole backwards and forwards, and onto which our belongings were loaded. Ursula Morrison presents an inscrutable (Rutherfoord 2000: 3–4) and distant history, devoid of personal involvement and perfected through reit- During this trip, Roy and his sister suf- eration. fered from bad bouts of malaria and had Her memories are verbatim and cap- to be carried the final two kilometres to tured. Hugh Morrison’s memories are their new home. locked up in the store, the physical When he was a child his parents were repository that created them. From the farming at Mfolozi. The legendary flood litany-like presentation of her personal of 1918 washed away their sugar crop, so

84 Memory, identity and inheritance amongst Zululand traders on moving north to Ndumu, his father, lightly by local people. Anyway, a local ‘RH’ Rutherfoord (known to the locals as Hlabisa man was then stabbed to death, Mthwazi or ‘monkey ropes’ and everyone ‘Remember David, he was such a nice else as ‘RH’) together with a consortium of man’, and all he was doing was trying to Mfolozi sugar farmers, formed the Ndumu mediate in this chaos. His five children Group9 and took over a store owned by the were then to be looked after by his eldest Von Wissels10. Peter Rutherfoord says of daughter, who at the time was in her mid- his grandfather ‘RH’ that he had traded in teens. David pipes up that she later became the Transkei before coming to Zululand to the postmistress in Hlabisa. David Irons, it ‘do sugar’, and says that ‘the trading spirit must be recalled, was still a small child at was in the blood’. Rutherfoord continues the time. Then Hazel Ueckerman tells of with a small child’s memories. African women arriving at the store laden The first few years at Ndumu were pretty with bundles of reeds on their heads, in tough going. My mother did not see a which are concealed assegais. Dawn Irons single white woman for the whole of the chips in, ‘Ja, that was a common way of first year. The Ndumu residents consisted doing it’. So then they get a missive from of our family, the shop assistant and Nongoma about this uprising. There are one white police sergeant. The assistant few men around (white men, that is) due was a Goanese and he ran the shop. to the war, and they go speeding off to (Rutherfoord 2000: 6) Nongoma to find assistance in quelling Rutherfoord speaks often in his stories the uprising. At the same time, De Wet the of Goanese traders in northern Zululand farmer speeds past in a cloud of dust. The and southern Mozambique. Given the story somehow shifts to Nongoma, where remoteness, some had evidently managed a Zulu man riding a donkey declares he is to cross the border to trade in South Africa Jesus and promptly gets shot through the despite the restrictions on Asians trading stomach by another Zulu brandishing a in Zululand. He describes them as anoma- Martini Henry rifle. David describes how lies, being brought up in British India and his innards were spewing out all over the fiercely loyal to the Crown, but at the same neck of the donkey. Hazel tells how all the time speaking fluent Portuguese. women at Nongoma came to stay in her Hazel Ueckerman, the only living rondavel, and how a man named Mabaso informant who traded through this pe- (‘he was such a sweet and caring man’) riod, has just turned 100. I sit with Hazel patrolled their rondavel all night, looking Ueckerman, her son David Irons and his after the women. wife Dawn as she conflates two different The magistrate Braatvedt tells this story stories of two different events. Whilst in a more coherent light. For him it was Oc- they were trading at Hlabisa, during the tober in 1942. Serving at Maphumulo at the war, ‘all these Zulus arrived at the store time, he was ordered to Nongoma where naked!’…we raised our eyebrows until she there was a report of an uprising in which elaborated that they were actually wearing a number of people had been killed. their ibheshus and isinenes, traditional A certain religious fanatic had succeeded loin cloth and rear covering. The reason in organising a gang of about fourteen men for this dress, Hazel Ueckerman explains, and several women. Not much notice had been taken of this man’s activities, either was that they were protesting – a local by the chiefs or government officials farmer named De Wet was charging people until one day, when he marched into the to dip their cattle, an action not regarded

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court house grounds, accompanied by his commodation, there was a chemist’s shop adherents. The men were all clothed in situated next to the store, which became various animal skins, and had a peculiar the family’s home until they could afford bundle with them, resembling a large to move. Thus, for some time they lived telescope holster about eight feet long.’ This bundle contained the assegais. in the chemist’s shop and traded from the Eventually four of the attackers were store next door. killed using ‘an ancient muzzle-loader. Hazel Ueckerman would have still been (Braatvedt 1949: 129) living in Hlabisa at the time of the uprising, and David Irons, her son, would have His story continues without the gory been two years old. Yet both remember it memories of Hazel Ueckerman which vividly, reinforced in family legend. Mau- were passed on to her son, David, with rice Bloch speaks of reiterative narrative the guts of the fanatic spilling all over the amongst the Madagascan Zafinmaniry as donkey. being important in the ‘re-establishment of Both she and David discuss those brief order’ as a particular incident such as his years in Hlabisa fondly, intertwining fam- seemingly random arrival is situated within ily folklore with fact in the telling of the an order of narrative explanation, and with stories. She tells, particularly of an inci- the repeated telling becomes a ‘prototypi- dent when she had just moved to trading cal present’. (Bloch 1998: 105) In addi- in remote Hlabisa with her first husband tion, ‘the characteristic of the individual’s Jack, of an elderly Zulu man coming into memory of what she has experienced the store whilst she was serving at the during her lifetime – her autobiographi- counter. He wanted a prepuce cover and cal memory – is not all that different from pointed to them.11 She had no idea what her knowledge of more distant historical these unusual grass constructed things events which she cannot possibly have which were hanging up in bunches were. lived through.’ (Bloch 1998: 115) Bloch Getting them down, she handed them to distinguishes between autobiographical the old kehla who solemnly inspected each memory and semantic memory, quoting one and measured it for size. He then chose Courtois (1993) and Todorov (1995) by the appropriate item, which was then paid saying that its mutating, multi-dimensional for in pennies. She had no idea why her and organic nature can render study prob- husband was doubled up with laughter, lematic. (Bloch 1998: 116) In investigating until he revealed all after that particular recollections of the 1947 anti-colonial shopping episode was completed and the revolt which killed 80 000 people in Mada- old man had left. She recalls with a laugh gascar, Bloch collected narratives as told that she was absolutely mortified with by people in the Zafinmaniry community. embarrassment! The Irons family traded at He describes the narrative as a ‘private Hlabisa from 1942 to 1945, when Hazel’s account’ as it relates to the people of the younger brother was discharged from the village, but in the telling it becomes the au- army, and they opted to move to Nongoma. thoritative one assisting in the reduction of Relatively urbane Nongoma was a far cry the arbitrariness of the memory. Bloch then from the remote Hlabisa. The store at Non- describes a separate incident when talking goma was more lucrative and bigger than with his ‘adoptive’ father, who relates a the Hlabisa one, and instead of a series of totally different story. He then suggests collapsing rondavels with flattened paraf- that the ‘same’ narratives have different fin tin roofs which had served as their ac- contexts and different purposes. One is a

86 Memory, identity and inheritance amongst Zululand traders ritual narrative related to community and in Nongoma. Hazel Ueckerman has these the other is an ad hoc narrative which is events as both Tantara and Anaganon, produced in one-on-one conversations. whereas Braatvedt presents them in a more (Bloch 1998: 108) This leads to two dif- empirical fashion. ferent ways of presenting history amongst Written sources such as memoirs have the Zafinmaniry, where Tantara is a col- value in presenting a voice of opinions and lective history that aims to ‘reduce events ideas. The notes of the magistrates, some to exemplary tales’ which are couched in of the richer written oral histories surviv- ‘moral value’, (Bloch 1998: 108) whereas ing, are peppered with anecdotes and tales the Anaganon, has the purpose of relating of man and beast. They are also valuable legendary events that have no temporal manuscripts in the telling of stories, of the location. Bloch’s approaches to telling relationships between the man that was ‘fact’, exists in the same framework as meant to be in authority and the people the relation of events of the 1947 uprising that he served on the ground.

Umfolozi Store owned by Otto Anderson 1914 (Photo: Errol Harrison) That smell that characterised the rural trading store was something mercurial, a mixture of scents and textures that were not always discernable but at the same time were recognisably comfortable. And there was the inside of the store, jam-packed with items hanging from the roof in colourful array – blankets, umbrellas, clothes on hangers, and others such as ploughshares, Zulu pots, medicaments, beads, and cloth which crammed the floor and wall space behind the wide, polished counter where you related with the storekeeper eyeball-to-eyeball and by name. People remember leaf tobacco, and sugar sold in twists of paper, and paraffin lamps. And on the counter would be a jar of sherbetty Zulu mottoes, proclaiming a variety of amorous declarations.

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Some of the Native Commissioners, for him in the new Afrikaner-dominated particularly, speak with a deep understand- administration, and that his time was ing of the culture of the people that they limited. served, and often these works are them- He had been thinking of his early selves mini-anthropologies. They can be adventures in Zululand trading with valuable and understated repositories of Africans, when he had seen Europeans information collected over years of inti- – including quite unbusinesslike English mate dealings, and speak of ceremonies gentlemen – making their own living long disappeared. at it, an adequate and honest living, H. Braatvedt, the magistrate and Native while remaining their own masters… to take over a ‘native trading-station’, Commissioner, was stationed for a time colloquially known as a ‘Kaffir store’, with at Ubombo. He arrived there in 1921, and some land attached, where I could live makes mention of JD Smythe as being the with my mother and him, our combined trader at the time12. energies being given to a happy blend It was a wilderness of a place in those of agriculture, commerce and home life. days. Our goods and chattels had to be The main flaw in this plan was that it did transported the eighty-odd miles from not allow for the amount of continuous Mahlabathini, by donkey-wagon. One hard work that it would involve. (Plomer load was sent on ahead, and we were 1985: 149) therefore, able to manage until the Fundamentally, much of this experience second installment arrived. One wagon, influenced his writing what was at the time unfortunately, had capsised into a donga, and practically all the furniture had been a contentious novel titled Turbott Wolfe. badly damaged. Not a single chair was This was published in 1925 and dealt fit to use…..The European population with inter-racial intercourse and marriage, consisted of two constables and a predating the first Immorality Act (No 5 of bachelor storekeeper. Later, conditions 1927) by two years. improved somewhat with the arrival of another storekeeper and his wife. Positioning oneself and the creation of (Braatvedt 1949: 69) identity Other voices also have value. The author Memory and memoir encapsulate that William Plomer describes his family’s trader’s version of their past. The original move to Entumeni near Eshowe to trade, storekeepers left a recognisable world as well as the situation of the trading store behind them for a variety of reasons, and and its micro-relationships. The decision stepped, mostly unwittingly, into a new and to move was made by his father based, as strange life, where one had to be constantly Plomer notes, on nostalgia and a romantic on guard for wild animals, sometimes hunt view of trade in Zululand. for food, and operate with resilience and In 1922, having completed the adminis- large doses of creativity. Isaiah Bowman tration involved in winding up the affairs reinforces this in words written in the of the Africans who had been serving in 1930s America saying that the early pio- France in the war, and serving a couple neers usually left very little behind them, more years in the Native Affairs Depart- thus the quality of life in his new home was ment, Plomer’s father took the decision to not of prime importance. (Bowman 1931: move to Zululand. 12–13) Hazel Ueckerman left an economi- Plomer notes that at the time his father cally depressed Durban, RH Rutherfoord a was aware that there was little space left desolate sugar enterprise but an experience

88 Memory, identity and inheritance amongst Zululand traders of trading in the Transkei. Geoff Johnson’s The customers came from round about father, the son of Archdeacon Charles the shop, where their grass huts were Johnson, too, began to trade as farming in widely scattered at the edge of the forest. the 1930s was difficult. Some of the men may have worked at the sugar mill or on the sugar farms but ‘The end of a new railway line at the many simply stayed at home with cattle frontier of settlement is one of the most in a kraal and their wives planting crops engaging places in the world. As a focus such as mealies, sweet potatoes, sugar of interest for the settler, it is far more im- beans, peanuts etc. The soil is poor so portant, as a rule, than any of the stations I do not imagine the crops would have along the way. That is because a railway been good. (Ibid) line once built, temporarily settles certain The life of the trader was characterised things about land values and transport that by living and trading in the spaces of “freeze” the economic situation’. (Bow- people with different cultures, languages man 1931: 64) This was certainly the case and needs. Despite the maintenance of for people in Zululand when the railhead some ‘English’ practices, such as the reached Somkhele at the beginning of the social rounds of tennis, and gymkhana twentieth century. Its arrival in 1903 has balls, which involved much logistical reached the annals of legend. Ursula Mor- arrangement, this isolation from urban rison says in her introduction to her short society sometimes became too much, history of Makakatana: and together with other pressures, often Can you imagine what it meant to forced traders to move to urban centres. live here 80 years ago! There was no reliable transport, the railway line ended Florence Bateman who ran the store at at Somkele which is kilometres from Dlolwana recalls that dealing with eight Mtubatuba and all the goods for the small children whilst living on a remote shop had to be transported by ox wagon trading station was problematic and the over rough tracks from that point. When major consideration in their decision to there was much rain the track was often move closer to town. Dee Hay too, from waterlogged and another way had to be Phindu Store at Magogo, realised when found wandering around the pans which formed during the rainy season. Malaria her children went off to school that she was simply a nuisance to be endured could not stand the separation and board- if one wished to live on the Zululand ing school was not an option. coast – just a fact of life. Everyone kept ‘…after about nine years in the small a supply of quinine and although there house behind the old shop and a baby No. were sprays which were usually diluted 5 on the way, the present home was built in with paraffin and sprayed from a pump 1958. Electricity was generated by a Lister action can, this had a very limited effect. This was long before the advent of DDT Motor and it was many years before Eskom and aerosols which did much to eradicate electricity was installed.’ Ursula Morrison malaria13. is speaking here of the frontier that she encountered moving to Makakatana as a The European storekeeper arriving in bride. Coming from a farming family, with Zululand broke personal, notional and a country boarding school education, she physical frontiers, moving into a land- was no stranger to hardship and the wilder- scape populated by mainly Zulu-speaking ness when she moved to Makakatana after people who were their potential source of she and Jimmy Morrison were married. income. She tells of the early times not with nos-

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The Mfolozi railway station, photographed 1914 talgia, but more of a matter of fact ‘this is (Rutherfoord c2000) At the same time, in how it was’ approach. Although her lounge an epilogue to his memoirs, Roy Ruther- is frilly, she is not. Florence Bateman and foord tells that Jean Aadnesgaard, both Calverley girls, On reading through these memoirs, I tell snippets of their life and experience realise how very lucky I have been to which today seem far-fetched in compari- have been through all these experiences son, but they relate them with the wonder – some difficult, some amusing, some of retrospect – the Calverley (Sutton) girls exciting, and am sure there are not many people who have lived through such were already third generation traders by times. It is also with pride that I can look this time, and any nuances of pioneering back and think what my folks started. were beaten out of them. They often started The hardships and the difficulties they from scratch – Jean Aadnesgaard speaks of endured, especially my mother who was building their store at Qudeni, and living cook, nurse, mother and who played so and trading in the same space and Florence many different roles…. I feel very proud Bateman describes leaving iNtikwe where to have been part of a company which, her parents had run the store and arriving through hard work and honesty, has at Dlolwana, their new venture as a young grown to what it is today. (Rutherfoord 2000: 100) married couple, to find it in flames – it had been torched by the previous owner. This As oft reminded, traders are often wont was merely disastrous information that to say, ‘We had good times’ or ‘We had fun’ one took in one’s stride and becomes part or ‘It was a good life’. In many instances, of a cornucopia of tales almost wondrous. nostalgia is measured against current Sue and Peter Rutherfoord missed the comfort (Shaw & Chase 1989: 1) but un- pioneering boat, only getting to Mkuze like the endless balmy summers that Shaw in 1970, but descriptions by Roy Ruther- and Chase refer to, these traders relate their foord, Peter’s father, tell of tall tales and discomforts with pride. battles fought against the odds – disease, It is also important to relate nostalgia wild animals and eccentric personalities. to the creation of identity. Common to

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A group of Mfolozi settlers in front of the store most traders, the KwaZulu Government living at Kalk Bay through rose-tinted closed their family stores (which were on spectacles, and then use this origin in their a 99-year lease) or took away their family construction of identity on the Cape Flats. farmlands which, in some instances, had ‘The sea is in our blood’ they say. Anna been worked for seven decades. Although Bohlin sees that the sea is constructed as people do not complain unduly or dwell a levelling factor: ‘There is no apartheid upon this, they do remember feeling ag- here, ou pellie (old friend), the fish don’t grieved that the government had removed mind who catches them’. (Bender & Winer totally viable businesses and placed them 2001: 280) ‘Trading is in our blood’ echoes in the hands of new traders without any this where the space of the trading store training. Traders recognise the lack of is a similar primordial functioning space: institutional support in this transfer, and apartheid may have materially separated the loss of holdings is a theme. some of the trading store floors, but the The discourse of dispossession in traders didn’t care where the money came apartheid years concentrates on people of from. Zululand traders are bound by ret- colour, and little is said of Europeans who rospect, common rules and shared experi- also received little or no compensation for ence. Bohlin suggests, too, that the expropriated property. This theme then be- fluidity of the sea is metaphorically comes a collective memory, an experience brought into the sphere of social shared, which adds to group discourse and relations, and a collectivised, idealised identity and possibly contributes in large identity is constructed that draws on, part to the formation of identity as trader, and is negotiated through, images of and elucidates the type of nostalgia that land- and seascapes. (Bender & Winer they express. 2001: 280) Similarities exist with people dispos- Identity is constructed through belong- sessed through the Group Areas Act in the ing within the exiled Kalk Bay community 1960s who were moved from Kalk Bay in that the memory of the place left is to the Cape Flats. They view their time portrayed through the presentation of a

91 Memory, identity and inheritance amongst Zululand traders

The small store and Post Office at Mfolozi, photographed 1914. A plough and mealie planter can be seen on the verandah, together with a waggon wheel, cases of beer and a paraffin tin. cohesive and ‘intact’ community. But this, the people who left, is a ‘landscape of as Bohlin motivates, is important in the the past.’ provision of a ‘constructive self-image.’ Conclusion In the conceptualisation as the Kalk Bay that they left, their current place of In Zululand even today, to a large degree residence is then thrown into opposition, the traders still operating occupy a social, constructing delineation which entrenches economic and cultural interface which resonates with the pioneer and frontier who they are and why they don’t belong lifestyle that their progenitors found. there. (Ibid: 280) However, at the same time, the position- The traders who left their Zululand ing of oneself, and creating the identity stores present also a mythical landscape, of ‘trader’ still situates one as an ‘other’. where life was good. And in the same way Thus memory, for the Zululand traders, is that the Kalk Bay residents of old today much of what their ‘trade’ is today. When view Kalk Bay as changed and ‘the Kalk considering long term and autobiographic Bay of the present as damaged’ (Bender & memories, and interpreting them it be- Winer 2001: 281) so too is the Zululand comes problematic in that the ‘memory’ landscape of their memory much changed. of a person is extended beyond that of It’s not like it was before … even Johnson, what happened. still implicated and actively trading, living Such recalling defines the person in in Natal and travelling daily to Zululand relation to time by invoking, or not invoking, notions of a past interaction says ‘trading is very different. There was with an external world which contains no crime.’ truth and falsehoods, permanent and As Bohlin refers, Kalk Bay, as a real impermanent elements, which is, or not, place which is authentic in the minds of in a state of continual creative dialectical

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flux. These ways of remembering the NOTES past not only create the imagined 1 Anna Bohlin in investigating the Kalk Bay external world but they create the community says after Tonkin that ‘Any imagined nature of the actor in the past account of the past must be understood as which, in so far as this actor is seen as a being in part a “social portrait”, expressing predecessor, refers also to those living in ideas and sentiments concerning identity, the present. (Bloch 1998: 81) morality and cosmology.’ (Bohlin in Bender The traders have a view of themselves & Winer 2001: 274) 2 See Papworth’s 1818 volume which recre- as actors in the drama of the past, and ated architectural tropes within romantic continue to play those roles in contempo- landscapes of a past and glorious England. rary times. (Papworth: 1818) DEBBIE WHELAN 3 See Thomas (1996), Connerton (1991) and Bloch (1998). 4 Telephones were still problematic in the SELECTED REFERENCES 1980s as Jimmy Morrison’s letters testify. Bloch, M. 1989. How we think they think: 5 Alfred Tembe, now working as the maitre’d anthropological approaches to cognition, at the Durban Club, was the herder for these memory and literacy. Boulder: Westview cattle, whilst his sisters all looked after the Press Morrison children. Bender, B & Winer (eds.) 2001. Contested 6 The closest hospital was in Empangeni, but Landscapes: movement, exile and place. the children were all born in Durban. Oxford: Berg Publishers 7 James and the children all went to the Bowman, I. 1931. The Pioneer Fringe – Special government boarding school at Eshowe Publication no 13. New York: American High, and then the grandchildren went on Geographical Society to private schooling at Hilton College and Braatvedt, H. 1949. Roaming Zululand with St Anne’s, both in Hilton, near Pietermar- a Native Commissioner. Pietermaritzburg: itzburg. This is a common feature of these Zululand stores, where the level of schooling Shuter & Shooter increased with the wealthier generations. Connerton, P. 1991. How societies remember. 8 This extract is from notes on Makakatana Cambridge: Press Syndicate, University of History, by Ursula Morrison on the Makaka- Cambridge tana Lodge website http://www.makakatana. Papworth, J. 1818. Rural residences consist- co.za/history.htm#why (8.04.08) ing of a series of designs for cottages, 9 The Ndumu Group actually started on a decorated cottages, small villas and other labour hunt. The initial visit to Ndumu was ornamental buildings accompanied by hints made with the purpose of setting up a labour on situation, construction, arrangement and recruiting agency for the Mtubatuba Mill decoration, in the theory & practice of rural Group. architecture; interspersed with some obser- 10 Von Wissel was trading in the area at the vations on landscape gardening. London: time of the Zululand Lands Delimitation R Ackerman. Commission and family members are ap- Plomer, W. 1993 [1926] Turbott Wolfe. Park- parently still trading in Swaziland. lands: A.D Donker (Pty) Ltd. 11 (KCM 1996: 142) umNcedo, a penis cover Plomer, W. 1984. The South African autobiog- made from iLala palm leaf, iNcema grass raphy. Cape Town: David Philip. and string ‘A full loin-covering was not Shaw, C. & Chase, M. 1989. The imagined complete without the wearing of a prepuce past: history and nostalgia. Manchester: cover.’ Manchester University Press. 12 JD Smythe was trading before Jack Irons Rutherfoord, R. c2000. Beyond where the dirt took over the Ubombo Store. road ends. Hluhluwe: Ndumu Group 13 http://www.makakatana.co.za/history. htm#why July 22 2008