The Mfecane as alibi : thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo

The ‘mfecane’ is a characteristic product of South African liberal history used by the apartheid state to legitimate South Africa's racially unequal land division. Some astonishingly selective use or actual invention of evidence produced the myth of an internally-induced process of black-on-black destruction centring on Shaka's Zulu. A re-examination of the ‘battles’ of Dithakong and Mbolompo suggests very different conclusions and enables us to decipher the motives of subsequent historiographical amnesias. After about 1810 the black peoples of southern Africa were caught between intensifying and converging imperialistic thrusts: one to supply the Cape Colony with labour; another, at Delagoa Bay, to supply slaves particularly to the Brazilian sugar plantations. The flight of the Ngwane from the Mzinyathi inland to the Caledon was, it is argued, a response to slaving. But they ran directly into the colonial raiding-grounds north of the Orange. The (missionary-led) raid on the still unidentified ‘Mantatees’ (not a reference to MaNtatisi) at Dithakong in 1823 was one of innumerable Griqua raids for slaves to counter an acute shortage of labour among Cape settlers after the British expansionist wars of 1811–20. Similar Griqua raids forced the Ngwane south from the Caledon into the Transkei. Here, at Mbolompo in 1828, the Ngwane were attacked yet again, this time by a British army seeking ‘free’ labour after the reorganisation of the Cape's labour-procurement system in July 1828. The British claim that they were parrying a Zulu invasion is exposed as propaganda, and the connexions between the campaign and the white-instigated murder of Shaka are shown. In short, African societies did not generate the regional violence on their own. Rather, caught within the European net, they were transformed over a lengthy period in reaction to the attentions of external plunderers. The core misrepresentations of ‘the mfecane’ are thereby revealed; the term, and the concept, should be abandoned

The case against the Mfecane

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented March, 1984By the 1970s the mfecane had become one of the most widely abused terms in southern African historical literature. Let the reader attempt a simple definition of the mfecane, for instance. This is not such an easy task. From one angle the mfecane was the Nguni diaspora which from the early 1820s took Nguni raiding communities such as the Ndebele, the Ngoni and the Gaza over a huge region of south-central Africa reaching as far north as Lake Tanzania. Africanists stress the positive features of the movement. As Ajayi observed in 1968: 'When we consider all the implications of the expansions of Bantu-speaking peoples there can he no doubt that the theory of stagnation has no basis whatsoever.' A closely related, though different, mfecane centres on Zululand and the figure of Shaka. It has become a revolutionary process internal to Nguni society which leads to the development of the ibutho and the tributary mode of production. Shaka is a heroic figure providing a positive historical example and some self-respect for black South Africans today. But inside these wider definitions another mfecane more specifically referring to the impact of Nguni raiders (the Nedbele, Hlubi and Ngwane) on the Sotho west of the Drakensberg. This mfecane encompasses a great field of African self-destruction extending from the Limpopo to the Orange. It allegedly depopulated vast areas of what became the Orange Free State, the Transvaal and, with the aid of the Zulu, Natal, which thus lay empty for white expansion. Dispersed African survivors clustered together and in time formed the enclave states of Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana. What Omer-Cooper terms the 'general distribution of white and Bantu landownership' in South Africa was thereby established. On these African-created foundations rose the so-called Bantustans or Homelands of twentieth-century South Africa. These conceptual contradictions coexist within mfecane theory with contrasting definitions of timing. As an era of history the latter 1trans-orangian' mfecane invariably begins in about 1820 and ends in either 1828 with the departure of the Ngwane, or in the mid-1830s with the arrival of the French missionaries and the Boers. The Zulu-centred mfecane, on the other hand, begins with the career of Dingiswayo at the end of the eighteenth century and often continues until the end of the Zulu kingdom in 1879. Subcontinental mfecanes sometimes continue until the 1890s. In short, there is no one definition of the mfecane. It can refer to people, to an era, to a process of internal development. It can be constructive, destructive; pro African, anti African; geographically narrow, or subcontinental. Not all of these contradictions can be resolved. Their existence requires an explanation, since their origins are by now well buried in the historiography. In the first part of this article my intention is to unravel the development of mfecane as it has been handed down in South African historiography. Many writers have had a hand in creating the mfecane. The poor taste of the dish derives from the poor quality of the initial ingredients. In the second part, I suggest some lines of attack on the pillars of mfecane mythology, and leave it to the reader to decide whether the concept is worth salvaging

An updated water balance for the Grootfontein aquifer near Mahikeng

The Grootfontein Aquifer, part of the important North West dolomite aquifers, supplies about 20% of Mahikeng’s domestic water needs. Over-abstraction caused the large natural spring draining the aquifer to disappear in 1981, and groundwater levels have since fallen nearly 30 m in the vicinity of the former spring. Analysis of water levels and a water balance using recent assessments of groundwater abstractions confirm past work describing the hydrogeological functioning of the aquifer, and suggest that current abstractions need to fall by between 19 and 36 ML/day (7 and 13 Mm3/a) to bring the aquifer back into longterm balance. Continued over-abstraction at Grootfontein implies increasing risk to Mahikeng’s water supply, and illuminates the larger challenge of ensuring groundwater use in the North West dolomites that is sustainable and in the public interest.Keywords: Groundwater, North West dolomites, Mahikeng, over-abstraction, irrigatio

Jettisoning the Mfecane (with Perestroika)

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented August, 1988In this paper I elaborate on the argument that 'the mfecane' is a pivotal component of a 'liberal', settler, apartheid-skeletal form a new analysis. The main assertion of mfecane propaganda is that a 'Zulu-centric' revolution produced an extensive depopulation which explains in historiographical sequence: the flight of peoples into the 'liberation' of the European economy, the land division of 1913, and, since the 1950s, the configuration of the Bantustans. In reply, it is shown that the sub-continental destabilisations and transformations within black societies sprang from the synchronous and converging impact of European penetration at Delagoa Bay, the Cape, north of the Orange, and Natal. In order to disguise what had occurred the whites erased themselves from their own impact, and retrospectively inserted Shaka and other victims of the process as initiators in situations where they were absent. The chronology is lengthened far beyond the (in this context) irrelevant reign of the Zulu monarch. Particular attention is paid to the sequences of this extended chronology and to the cross-interactions between the sectors of the white advance. It is not the intention to minimise change internal to black societies, but rather to make a call for this to be researched in its proper context. The huge gaps in our knowledge revealed by this approach ensure that this task is a formidable one

The SADC Groundwater Data and Information Archive, Knowledge Sharing and Co-operation Project. Final report

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Groundwater Data and Information Archive, Knowledge Sharing and Co-operation Project, funded by the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) and Department for International Development, UK (DFID), was initiated in September 2009 to identify, catalogue and subsequently promote access to the large collection of reports held in the UK by the British Geological Survey (BGS). The work has focused on a wealth of unpublished so-called “grey” data and information which describes groundwater occurrence and development in Southern Africa and was gathered by the BGS over its many decades of involvement in the region. The project has four main aims: To catalogue and describe the "grey data" documents on SADC groundwater held by the BGS within a digital metadatabase. To identify a sub-set of scanned documents to be made freely available to groundwater practitioners and managers in the SADC region by electronic distribution. To link the metadatabase and digital sub-set of documents via a web portal hosted by the BGS, to enable download of documents by SADC groundwater workers. To strengthen links between BGS hydrogeologists with counterparts in SADC, and provide an example of groundwater data sharing which could be emulated by other European Geological Surveys with substantial data holdings on SADC groundwater. The project has successfully met these aims. The assessment of BGS archived material produced an electronic meta-database describing 1735 items held in hard copy. Of these, 1041 have been scanned digitally to searchable Portable Document Format (PDF) format. A subset of 655 PDFs including partial documents related to groundwater development from the colonial and post independence period as well as BGS internal project reports and reports approved for web dissemination by host countries are now available to download (free of charge) at http://www.SADCgroundwaterarchive.com . Initial results indicate a good deal of interest both from within SADC and elsewhere, accessed by directly addressing the website and via a search engine such as Google. The information presented has already been used by in-region projects such as the SADC Hydrogeological Mapping project and the Malawi Water Assessment Project. This is essentially a pilot project providing an example of how Web delivery of the archive is an important step forward for the well-being of the SADC region. It permits access to documents few even new existed and will, it is hoped, provide a valuable dataset that should inhibit the temptation to waste scarce resources by ‘re-inventing the wheel’

A study of why some physic concepts in the South African Physical Science curriculum are poorly understood in order to develop a targeted action-research intervention for Newton’s second law

Globally, many students show a poor understanding of concepts in high school physics and lack the necessary problem-solving skills that the course demands. The application of Newton’s second law was found to be particularly problematic through document analysis of South African examination feedback reports, as well as from an analysis of the physics examinations at a pair of well-resourced South African independent schools that follow the Independent Examination Board curriculum. Through an action-research approach, a resource for use by students was designed and modified to improve students’ understanding of this concept, while modelling problemsolving methods. The resource consisted of brief revision notes, worked examples and scaffolded exercises. The design of the resource was influenced by the theory of cognitive apprenticeship, cognitive load theory and conceptual change theory. One of the aims of the resource was to encourage students to translate between the different representations of a problem situation: symbolic, abstract, model and concrete. The impact of this resource was evaluated at a pair of schools using a mixed methods approach. This incorporated pre- and post-tests for a quantitative assessment, qualitative student evaluations and the analysis of examination scripts. There was an improvement from pre- to post-test for all four iterations of the intervention and these improvements were shown to be significant. The use of the resource led to an increase in the quality and quantity of diagrams drawn by students in subsequent assessments

The metamorphic petrology and structure of the district north west of Clifden, CO Galway

In the course of the present study the area has been mapped in detail on the six inch scale and a stratigraphical succession has been suggested. The regional metamorphism has been investigated and found to be of amphibolite facies. Metamorphic zones demarcated in pelitic rocks by staurolite, staurolite + sillimanite, and sillimanite + muscovite, have been recognised and the zonal isograds have been mapped. Two post-kinematic granites were intruded into the metasediments, they are adamellitic in composition and are, together with veral other small granite bodies, related to the Galway Granite. The metasediments have been thermally metamorphosed and zones of thermal metamorphism have been mapped, an inner zone of andalusite hornfels, (hornblende hornfels facies), and an outer zone of spotted schist, (epidote actinolite hornfels facies).Fourteen chemical analyses of the metasedimentary rocks were made with the purpose of investigating the question of metasomatism in the regional and thermal metamorphism, and for comparing the metasediments with unmetamorphosed sedimentary rocks. It has been concluded that metasomatism did not occur during either the regional or thermal metamorphism. Chemically the metasediments compare closely with sediments carried into a shelf sea from an adjacent land mass of moderate or low relief and it is concluded that the metasediments were deposited under similar conditions. Three periods of folding have been recognised: 1. East - West, syn-metamorphic 2. East - West, post-metamorphic 3. North - South, post-metamorphic. The first east-west folding resulted in the formation of recumbent, isoclinal nappes. These were subsequently cross folded about an east-west axis to give the present - Connemara anticline which was then deformed by gentle folding about a north-south axis. A swarm of north-south trending dykes was intruded in association with the granite emplacement, and at the same time the area was fractured by a system of faults striking north west - south east, and north east - south west. The area was finally subjected to sub-aerial erosion and glaciated in Pleistocene times

The Mfecane: Beginning the inquest

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 12 September 1988In this paper I elaborate on the argument that 'the mfecane' is a pivotal component of a 'liberal', settler, apartheid-skeletal form a new analysis. The main assertion of mfecane propaganda is that a 'Zulu-centric' revolution produced an extensive depopulation which explains in historiographical sequence: the flight of peoples into the 'liberation' of the European economy, the land division of 1913, and, since the 1950s, the configuration of the Bantustans. In reply, it is shown that the sub-continental destabilisations and transformations within black societies sprang from the synchronous and converging impact of European penetration at Delagoa Bay, the Cape, north of the Orange, and Natal. In order to disguise what had occurred the whites erased themselves from their own impact, and retrospectively inserted Shaka and other victims of the process as initiators in situations where they were absent. The chronology is lengthened far beyond the (in this context) irrelevant reign of the Zulu monarch. Particular attention is paid to the sequences of this extended chronology and to the cross-interactions between the sectors of the white advance. It is not the intention to minimise change internal to black societies, but rather to make a call for this to be researched in its proper context. The huge gaps in our knowledge revealed by this approach ensure that this task is a formidable one

The Iwakura Mission in Britain, 1872

In London, at the Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines (LSE), a symposium was held on 6 December 1997 - the anniversary of the day when the members of Iwakura's delegation were received by Queen Victoria. Comprising four lectures the symposium was attended by a packed audience of some 75 people including the Joint Chairman and many members of the Japan Society, several senior representatives of the Japanese Embassy, as well as staff and students. Each lecturer focused sharply on a particular aspect of the Mission's work in Britain that fell within his or her special field and each prompted numerous questions and much discussion. It is some measure of the great range of subjects that the Mission was attempting to cover that there was no real overlap between any of the four papers. They are now included in their entirety in this volume.Iwakura misson, Victorian London, Kume Kunitake, Iwakura Tomomi, Ito Hirobumi, education, industry, exports, religion, Kairan Jikki chronicle, Meiji government, unequal treaties, embassy, 1872, Britain, Japan, America.

Developing groundwater for rural water supply in Nigeria : a report of the May 2005 training course and summary of groundwater issues in the eight focus states

The British Geological Survey was commissioned to strengthen the capacity of the rural water supply and sanitation agencies in eight states in Nigeria to undertake groundwater resource evaluation and development. These states (Jigawa, Benue, Enugu, Eketi, Zamfara, Kwara, Borno and Ebonyi)are the focus of a current FGN/UNICEF WES Project, supported by DFID. The opportunity was also taken to assess the hydrogeological issues facing the eight states and to suggest ways to help meet this need