Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Published by HSRC Press Private Bag X9182, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa www.hsrcpress.ac.za First published 2009 ISBN (soft cover) 978-0-7969-2233-5 ISBN (pdf) 978-0-7969-2248-9 © 2009 Human Sciences Research Council The views expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Human Sciences Research Council (‘the Council’) or indicate that the Council endorses the views of the author. In quoting from this publication, readers are advised to attribute the source of the information to the individual author concerned and not to the Council. Copyedited by Lee Smith Typeset by Baseline Publishing Services Cover by FUEL Design Cover illustration from The Death of Hintsa by Hilary Graham, reproduced with kind permission of the Albany Museum, Grahamstown Distributed in Africa by Blue Weaver Tel: +27 (0) 21 701 4477; Fax: +27 (0) 21 701 7302 www.oneworldbooks.com Distributed in Europe and the United Kingdom by Eurospan Distribution Services (EDS) Tel: +44 (0) 20 7240 0856; Fax: +44 (0) 20 7379 0609 www.eurospanbookstore.com Distributed in North America by Independent Publishers Group (IPG) Call toll-free: (800) 888 4741; Fax: +1 (312) 337 5985 www.ipgbook.com Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za For Kiera, to account for the absence; Jaymathie and Jayantilal Lalu; and Hansa Lalloo Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za vi Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za List of illustrations viii Acknowledgements x Introduction: thinking ahead 1 1 Colonial modes of evidence and the grammar of domination 31 2 Mistaken identity 65 3 The properties of facts (or how to read with a grain of salt) 101 4 Reading ‘Xhosa’ historiography 141 5 The border and the body: post-phenomenological reflections on the borders of apartheid 191 6 History after apartheid 219 Conclusion 253 Notes 270 Bibliography and archival sources 309 Index 329 Contents Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za List of illustrations  1 The cover of the Frederick I’Ons exhibition catalogue; there is little clarity on whether the figure portrayed is Hintsa or Nqeno 71  2 Charles Michell’s cartographic representation of the landscape in which Hintsa was killed, published in 1835 83  3 Flight of the Fingoes [sic], by Charles Michell, 1836 84  4 Warriors Fleeing Across a River/The Death of Hintsa, by Frederick I’Ons. n.d. 90  5 Portrait of Hintsa, by Charles Michell, 1835 98  5 Portrait of Hintsa, by George Pemba, 1937 98  6 The tragic death of Hintsa, triptych by Hilary Graham, 1990 222–223 viii Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za ix Ah, Britain! Great Britain! Great Britain of the endless sunshine! You sent us truth, denied us the truth; You sent us life, deprived us of life; You sent us light, we sit in the dark, Shivering, benighted in the bright noonday sun. SEK Mqhayi, on the visit of the Prince of Wales to South Africa in 1925, translated by AC Jordan History always tells how we die, never how we live. Roland Barthes, Michelet, 104 Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za x Perhaps the most daunting task in completing this book is to recall the many people who have had to endure its long incubation. If I mention them by name, it is not so that they may be reminded of their complicity in The Deaths of Hintsa but to thank them for their generosity, insight, friendship and love over the years. To them I attribute my long-held desire to substitute a politics of despair with a politics of setting to work on postcolonial futures. My first foray into writing this book began under the watchful eye of Allen Isaacman and Jean Allman at the University of Minnesota, as a graduate student in African History and as a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship grant. The more detailed study of the story of Hintsa was initially submitted as a doctoral dissertation under the title ‘In the Event of History’ to the University of Minnesota in 2003. Thanks to Allen Isaacman, Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for the Study of Global Change, I was granted an opportunity to interact with a group of thought-provoking historians of Africa including Maanda Mulaudzi, Peter Sekibakiba Lekgoathi, Marissa Moorman, Jacob Tropp, Heidi Gengenbach, Derek Peterson, Ana Gomez, Alda Saute, Helena Pohlandt McCormick and Jesse Buche. While at the University of Minnesota, John Mowitt, Qadri Ismail, Ajay Skaria, David Roediger, Lisa Disch and Bud Duvall provided many new and exciting directions for developing my thoughts on colonialism, apartheid and postapartheid South Africa. John Mowitt and Qadri Ismail gave new meaning to the idea of academic exchange, with Qadri especially responsible for teaching me a thing or two. The members of the postcolonial reading group fostered friendships conducive to the exploration of ideas. Monika Mehta (for teaching me how to cut), Andrew Kinkaid, Guang Lei, Joel Wainwright and Adam Sitze (for teaching me how not to cut) have, unbeknown to them, been present at every stage of the writing even as I Acknowledgements Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za [...]... were cut of as military souvenirs.28 In adhering to the broad outlines of Peires’s account of the cattle killing, Mda ofers the following account of the circumstances in which Hintsa was killed Narrating the unfolding drama of the cattle killing, Mda reminds us of the chasm between the administrative burden of the colonial archive and the demands of anti-colonial memory: The Otherworld where the ancestors... in the denunciations were the very traces of the contestations that lie at the heart of South African history At the height of a moment of political transition endowed with historic achievement and signiicance, there could be no room for doubt The introduction of the story of the killing of Hintsa was treated as a mere distraction in the overall objectives of transition – from the apartheid to the. .. inquiry of the TrC.20 While Nicholas Gcaleka operated outside of the parameters of the rules of the true, he nevertheless touched a raw nerve by invoking the nineteenth-century story of the killing of Hintsa Neither notions of truth (in relation to the commission of inquiry into his death in 1836) nor reconciliation (in relation to accusations that he was beheaded) applied to 6 the deaths of hintsa. .. everywhere?’46 The resultant impasse, we might say, that activates the programme of the SSC is aligned with the critique of humanism that permeates the interventions of Fanon both in terms of the problem of subject constitution and the irreducibility of colonised subject in the discourse of Europe The dialogue with the SSC is aimed at unravelling the crisis of history in a manner that clears the ground for the. .. seem to it the roles ascribed to him from high above The misit of the text often wreaks havoc with the prescriptions 14 the deaths of hintsa Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za of discipline, sometimes exceeding expectations and at others falling hopelessly short thereof If Gcaleka is indeed to ofer a diferent reading of the South African past, and help in unravelling the hegemony of the colonial... system of oppression It clears the ground for thinking ahead, after apartheid, through a series of reversals and displacements of the techniques of subject formation generic to the colonial archive and its modes of evidence For this I propose that we allow the misits of the text23 to lead the way – without, I should add, too much expectation of where they might lead us The Deaths of Hintsa brings together... onset of the postapartheid? My own contribution to the discourse of the SSC is to show how history works to put the subaltern in his or her place by recourse to the modes of evidence that constitute the colonial archive while ofering the SSC some recourse to the watchword of apartheid The intellectual programme charted by the SSC serves as a strategic interlocutor because it expands the sense of the critical... forms of subjection The key question was: how could a form of evidence once used to cover up acts of violence be depended on to ofer us an escape from the violence of the apartheid past? Nicholas Gcaleka’s fate depended as much on the coincidence between a regime of truth and the modes of evidence of the archive as it did on the judgements rendered about his personality Much was made in the press of the. .. one of the originators of the project, notes: Our critique, which stands at the limit of World-history, has no compunction whatsoever in ignoring this advice [from Hegel] From the point of view of those left out of World-history this advice amounts to condoning precisely such ‘world historical deeds’ – the rape of continents, the destruction of cultures, the poisoning of the environment – as helped the. .. suggested, the theories of change I am not necessarily interested in comparative histories in the social scientiic sense of that term or in the use of the term ‘subaltern’ to denote yet another subject category in the pantheon of multiculturalism I do not feel that the term ‘subaltern’ should limit us to a sense of categorical distinction Mine is a more selective advancement of the project of the SSC . incubation. If I mention them by name, it is not so that they may be reminded of their complicity in The Deaths of Hintsa but to thank them for their generosity,. example, the human rights violation inquiry of the . 20 While Nicholas Gcaleka operated outside of the parameters of the rules of the true, he nevertheless