Tracking Down the Sources of James Stuart’s Readers

Abstract

In the period from 1923 to 1926, James Stuart, a former Natal colonial official, produced five readers written in isiZulu for use in Natal’s isiZulu-speaking schools. They were uTulasizwe (1923), uHlangakula (1924), uBaxoxele (1924), uKulumetule (1925) and uVusezakiti (1926). Each consisted of a number of izifundo, or ‘lessons’, on what Stuart would have called Zulu ‘history and custom’. They have generally been seen as Stuart’s own writings, but research into the six published volumes of the James Stuart Archive has led to the development of a quite different picture. It is now clear that many of the izifundo were drawn, often verbatim, from Stuart’s notes on his conversations about the past with specific African interlocutors, who can be named and whose lives, to varying degrees, can be researched. This finding transforms our understanding of the place occupied by Stuart’s readers in the historical literature written in isiZulu. As an aid to further research in this field, this article lists the individual interlocutors whom the author has so far been able to identify.

Keywords:

• Archive
• James Stuart
• oral histories
• Zulu history
• Zulu literature

Notes

1 This article is a slightly revised version of a paper presented to the conference of the Southern African Historical Society at Rhodes University, Makhanda, in June 2019. My thanks to the participants for useful comments. The original paper is accessible on the website of the Five Hundred Year Archive, a project of the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative at the University of Cape Town. See fhya.org.

2 C. de B. Webb and J.B. Wright, eds, The James Stuart Archive of Recorded Oral Evidence Relating to the History of the Zulu and Neighbouring Peoples, 6 vols (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press/University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 1976–2014 (in progress)). See also John Wright, ‘Making the James Stuart Archive’, History in Africa, 23 (1996), 333–50.

3 Carolyn Hamilton, Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), ch. 4; Carolyn Hamilton, ‘Backstory, Biography, and the Life of the James Stuart Archive’, History in Africa, 38 (2011), 319–41.

4 See the discussions in Hamilton, Terrific Majesty; Paul la Hausse de Lalouvière, Restless Identities: Signatures of Nationalism, Zulu Ethnicity and History in the Lives of Petros Lamula (c.1881–1948) and Lymon Maling (1889–c.1936) (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 2000); Hlonipha Mokoena, Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2011).

5 Hamilton, Terrific Majesty; Hamilton, ‘Backstory’; Wright, ‘Making the James Stuart Archive’.

6 John Wright, ‘James Stuart’, entry in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition, 2006.

7 On the political history of Natal in this period see John Lambert and Robert Morrell, ‘Domination and Subordination in Natal 1890–1920’, in Robert Morell, ed., Political Economy and Identities in KwaZulu-Natal: Historical and Social Perspectives (Durban: Indicator Press, 1996), 63–95.

8 James Stuart, History of the Zulu Rebellion 1906 (London: Macmillan, 1913). See also Paul Thompson, ‘A Critical Analysis of James Stuart’s A History of the Zulu Rebellion 1906’, History in Africa, 41 (2014), 195–220.

9 Magema Fuze, Abantu Abamnyama Lapa Bavela Ngakona (Pietermaritzburg: private publ., 1922; English translation by H.C. Lugg, edited by A.T. Cope, The Black People and Whence They Came (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1979)); Petros Lamula, UZulukaMalandela (Durban: Star Printing Works, 1924). See also Nicholas Cope, To Bind the Nation: Solomon kaDinuzulu and Zulu Nationalism 1913–1933 (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1993); la Hausse de la Lalouvière, Restless Identities.

10 Eileen Krige, The Social System of the Zulus (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter and Shooter, 1936); A.T. Bryant, The Zulu People as They Were before the White Man Came (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter and Shooter, 1949).

11 A.T. Bryant, Olden Times in Zululand and Natal (London: Longmans, Green, 1929).

12 Petros Lamula, Isabelo sikaZulu (Pietermaritzburg: Lincroft Books, 1963 ed.), 214.

13 John Wright and Carolyn Hamilton, ‘“Black” Histories, “White” Histories, “Mixed” Histories: Perspectives from Zulu Historiography’ (unpublished conference paper, University of the Witwatersrand, 2001), 12–16.

14 B.W. Vilakazi, ‘Some Aspects of Zulu Literature’, African Studies, 1 (1942), 274.

15 Daphna Golan, Inventing Shaka: Using History in the Construction of Zulu Nationalism (Boulder: Lynne Riener, 1994), 77, 78, 88.

16 Golan, Inventing Shaka, 59.

17 e.g. C.T. Msimang, Kusadliwa Ngoludala (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter and Shooter, 1975).

18 A.T. Cope, ‘Observations Arising from Rycroft’s Study of the Praises of Dingane’, South African Journal of African Languages, 10, 4 (1990), 300.

19 Hamilton, Terrific Majesty, 59–69.

20 John Wright, ‘Ndukwana kaMbengwana as an Interlocutor on the History of the Zulu Kingdom, 1897–1903’, History in Africa, 38 (2011), 343–68; John Wright, ‘Socwatsha kaPhaphu, James Stuart, and Their Conversations on the Past, 1897–1922’, Kronos: Southern African Histories, 41 (2015), 142–65; John Wright, ‘Thununu kaNonjiya Gcabashe visits James Stuart in the Big Smoke to Talk about History’, Natalia: Journal of the Natal Society Foundation, 49 (2019), 1–12.

21 Cynthia Kros and John Wright, ‘“You Can Write and Remember but We Are Simply Izithunguthu’”, in Dilip Menon, ed. [title to be decided], Abingdon-on-Thames; Routledge (in press).

22 See the APC’s Five Hundred Year Archive website, accessible at fhya.org.