INTRODUCTION I N T R O D U C T I O N Discovering applied history hy should anyone write a book about Makhanda and his role in the battle Wat Grahamstown? To date, historians have given it at most two chapters in their comprehensive histories of the Eastern Cape and its indigenous Xhosa inhabitants.1 That has always felt like enough. It is told as a sad tale of the warrior- prophet Makhanda futilely leading ten thousand Xhosa soldiers in a disastrous assault on British army headquarters in Grahamstown on 22 April 1819.2 The moral of the story is generally about the inability to mount effective military action based on religious motivations, as preached by Makhanda to rally his forces; with a secondary message about the suicidal price paid for divisions within the Xhosa nation at that time. Admittedly, the numbers involved were rather large for those days. But mostly it is treated as an event that was a little peculiar, or perhaps embarrassing. In 1993, soon after I arrived in Grahamstown and started teaching in the History Department at Rhodes University, I asked a local black student what he knew and thought about the ‘Battle of Grahamstown’. He answered that Makhanda was a fool who led thousands of innocent people to their needless deaths, a disgrace to all right-thinking people. I accepted this as an informed African view and assumed it was shared by many others. Such a story was better swept under the carpet. Who wants to be reminded of an idiot and his conned followers? With time, however, it became clear that two quite different views on the great battle at Grahamstown co-existed in its local black community. There were those who thought it was awesome and amazing as well as those who thought it was a frivolous waste of human life. For some, Makhanda was the heroic prototype of the modern freedom fighter; to others he was an embarrassing fool. And then, just as the twenty-first century dawned, something like a revival of the heroic view of Makhanda began to build momentum. As it grew, the tragic Makhanda came increasingly to be associated with the inherited colonial textbook version of history, while the heroic Makhanda represented a long-suppressed popular view. This growing differentiation only became clear through a wide range of heritage-related activities, in some of which I was directly involved. My engagement 1 THE RETURN OF MAKHANDA with these activities triggered the interest, which resulted in an extended research project. The point of the project became something more than just filling in some gaps in the existing body of historical information. Within this task lies a somewhat different kind of quest. It represents a creative exploration into the relationship between a dramatic historical event and the community from which it comes. It arises from the question of how historical knowledge is produced and what its purpose is, particularly in the context of a developing country like South Africa. Unlike the more conventional forms of history writing, it did not originate in a review of existing sources and then the production of a theory on how to revise that knowledge. Instead, it started with my involvement in a variety of community- based history projects that exposed a strong divergence in views between what people on the ground think and feel about their past and what the books say. Such initiatives fall under the broad label of applied history, providing an alternative methodology, point and purpose for producing historical knowledge. It is a completely different approach, which starts with questions such as ‘How is this history going to be useful, and to whom?’ It implies placing the issue of relevance at the very centre of the investigations. Applied history also implies history that is used in concrete and tangible ways. This is a research approach that takes people’s participation as the starting point, first allowing a popular voice to emerge and then using that perspective to assess and judge all previous efforts to tell the story. It places the popular view at the centre of the analysis. When this is done, then indeed a major revision of the history emerges. Instead of being a battle based on misguided superstitions, the attack on Grahamstown is understood as one of the best-orchestrated attempts to liberate vast tracts of land seized from the amaXhosa by the British.3 A secondary theme growing out of extensive applied historical participation is a reconsideration of the nature of traditional leadership in the days of Makhanda. This challenges the question of the alleged divisions among the amaXhosa, revealing that despite enormous tensions, the direction of events was always towards securing a much- needed unity of purpose. Discovering Egazini, the Place of Blood My journey into the realm of applied history started in 2000 when I was asked to be a historical consultant to a new project, dealing with the ‘Battle of Grahamstown’. I answered honestly that I did not know anything special about it, but I had been doing research on missionary history in the area in the same time period, so had a 2 INTRODUCTION sense of the context. Apart from that, I agreed because the project sounded like fun. Thirty local artists from all walks of life were to be introduced to the history of the battle at Grahamstown and then produce a single visual image on any aspect of their choice. The collected images, in turn, would form an exhibition at the 2000 National Arts Festival.4 The project, designed by fine arts practitioners Giselle Bailie and Dominic Thorburn, was quite correct politically, stressing the need for a new history, new voices and new perspectives. It included training black youth and women who had limited prior experience as artists, as well as some big-name professional artists. The project started with almost simmering awe and a sense that, even if we did not know the details of this event, at least the broad sweep of what happened was very dramatic. Underlying that drama was an important story and message. Everyone sensed this, giving a foundation of mission that helped define the project. The simple knowledge that the battle was big and that it all happened on our doorsteps fascinated and intrigued participants. Whether it was a tragedy or a symbol of hope remained to be seen. One of the welcome features of my task was that I was invited to include young township people in doing fresh research, including oral history. A team of four project historians became my special targets for a crash course, in about four lessons, on how to do history in new ways. This proved rather harder than first anticipated. Though we started with a review of the basic available literature and moved from there to pressing hard for fresh questions and meanings, it felt almost impossible to get away from the quest to simply know what really happened. Though the project historians enjoyed the challenges of trying to identify what was most relevant or not, the artists were grumpy and irascible – ‘just wanting to know the truth’. In all the excitement about rediscovering the past, they went dashing off to the library where they eagerly grabbed every book they could find, but immediately ran into the old version of the story, with its negative connotations. The books acknowledge that it was a big event, but the heroic elements are not only missing, they have been replaced by the embarrassing ones, centred on religious fanaticism. The artists ran directly into the historical accounts that reduced the event in size and significance. Some of the enthusiasts, encased by the weight of the printed word in the libraries, felt they had hit a virtual brick wall contained in the inherited versions of the story. Then frustration and confusion began to enter the picture. The artists were sullen or angry that sources sometimes contradicted each other and resentful if we 3 THE RETURN OF MAKHANDA suggested that certain ways the stories were told in the history books might not be totally reliable. The notion of contested, nuanced, and ultimately biased history simply did not fit what the artists thought they should be getting from historians. In a later project, one of the artists produced an image of a gigantic pain reliever tablet sinking into the head of a perplexed person, as a direct statement on how difficult it was to absorb and digest all the implications of doing history.5 In retrospect, however, despite all the protestations it feels as if the repeated emphasis on new, fresh and different actually worked. The images in the art exhibition, which received rave reviews, were indeed varied and nuanced. Some captured the sense of deep despair, fear, suffering and helplessness felt by the Xhosa people as they were expelled from their homes and then shot to pieces by the British. Others captured the spirit of pride, strength, courage and hope that came with the determination to fight back. Still others incorporated aspects of the local landscape, suggesting the primacy of the land. Despite the confusion from encountering the old version of the story, most of the artists ended up creating their own counter interpretations. In fact, it appeared that the less literate the artist, the clearer, more focused and strong were the voices. The results were exciting, not only for understanding today’s views on the battle at Grahamstown better, but also for opening up a whole new way of approaching the question of producing knowledge about the past. Though a few of the artists retained a sense of the tragic rendering of the story, most felt exhilarated by the heroic dynamics.