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Abstract
In 1860, a case was brought before the court of Pietermaritzburg in the colony of Natal over the illegal possession and sale of guns. What made this case unique was the primary witness against the defendant: an African constable named Budaza. Budaza proudly claimed in his testimony that he had threatened the defendant with his ‘sticks’ during the arrest, despite the constable having misplaced his badge. Though Budaza appears only briefly in the colonial records, his testimony during the trial highlighted his firm belief in his position that transcended the badge he did not possess. Symbols of office like the badge and ‘sticks’ (likely a spear and knobkerrie) were signs of authority within the colonial community, but also representative of an internalised sense of power during this formative period of Natal. When these symbols of leadership and state power were implemented, they revealed a solidified sense of legitimacy granted by the colonial government but also embodied in the attitudes of African policemen. This article will use Budaza’s case to help answer questions of police and colonial power and the notion of indigenous agency in the rural and urban segments of Natal. The interaction between Black police and white settler society will reveal the transitory nature of power in these police institutions and the complicated way these narratives are remembered within the history of KwaZulu-Natal.
Notes
1 I have called this period – from the declaration of the district of Natal as a British territory in May 1844 to the South African War of 1899 – the ‘formative period’ of the colony, as part of an attempt to highlight its importance. It is during this period that Natal created the major institutions, political, military and economic, that would eventually define it as a colonial state.
2 See M. Brogden, ‘The Origins of the SAP’, Acta Juridica, 5 (3) (1989): 6–7; D. Anderson and D. Killingray, eds, Policing the Empire: Government, Authority, and Control, 1830–1940 (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1991), 4.
3 See A. Grunlingh, ‘Protectors and Friends of the People: The South African Constabulary in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony, 1900–8’ and B. Nasson, ‘Bobbies to Boers: Police, People, and Social Contract in Cape Town’, in Anderson and Killingray, Policing the Empire, 168–82 and 236–54; D. Killingray and A. Clayton, Khaki and Blue: Military and Police in British Colonial Africa, Ohio University Center for International Studies Monographs in International Studies, Africa Series (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1989); C. Enloe, Police, Military, and Ethnicity: Foundations of State Power (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1980), 110.
4 See J. Brewer, Black and Blue: Policing in South Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); M. Brogden, ‘The Emergence of the Police – The Colonial Dimension’, The British Journal of Criminology, 27, 1 (1987): 4–14; A.F. Hattersley, The First South African Detective (Cape Town: Timmins, 1960); H.P. Holt, The Mounted Police of Natal (London: J. Murray, 1913); W.J. Clarke, The NMP: A Record of the Services of the Natal Mounted Police (Pietermaritzburg: Calvert, 1893); E. Wilson, Reminiscences of a Frontier Armed & Mounted Police Officer in South Africa (Grahamstown: C.T. Campbell, 1866).
5 E.W. Searle, With a Policeman in South Africa; or, Three Years in the Natal Mounted Police (London: Abbey Press, 1900), 77, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008698716; Wilson, Reminiscences, 145.
6 ‘African’ is being used as simplified shorthand for Black people of African descent who occupied, whether originally or through migration, the colony of Natal during this period. The complexities of this question are too extensive to address here, but are analysed in scholarship by Guy and Lambert, and remain evident in the complexities of the mfecane debate. I have particularly attempted to avoid the generalised use of the term ‘Zulu’, largely because of the amorphous nature and misuse of this term during this period. Michael Mahoney’s scholarship has been pivotal in facilitating new questions on this issue, especially regarding the adoption of Zulu identity between elites and the lower classes, or a type of ‘Zulu-ization’. See M.R. Mahoney, The Other Zulus: The Spread of Zulu Ethnicity in Colonial South Africa (Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2012), 1–5; J. Guy, Theophilus Shepstone and the Forging of Natal: African Autonomy and Settler Colonialism in the Making of Traditional Authority (Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2013); J. Lambert, Betrayed Trust: Africans and the State in Colonial Natal (Scottsville: University of Natal Press, 1995); C. Hamilton, ed., The Mfecane Aftermath: Reconstructive Debates in Southern African History, 1st ed. (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1995).
7 This is a larger generalisation for the British Empire but gives credence to the expectations that were held by many colonial communities. See D. Anderson and D. Killingray’s ‘Consent, Coercion and Colonial Control: Policing the Empire, 1830–1940’, in Anderson and Killingray, Policing the Empire, 7.
8 The ‘Natal Africans’ were often and almost universally categorised as ‘Zulu’ during this period, despite all the evidence to the contrary. This complexity leads to the more general use of ‘African’ in this work and is a nod to the work on this issue by Michael Mahoney. See Mahoney, The Other Zulus.
9 Mokoena has looked at this issue in her analysis of the visual representation of police in photography; see H. Mokoena, ‘The Policeman, Reconsidered’, Interventions, 18, 6 (1 November 2016): 800–05, https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2016.1196146.
10 S.T. Plaatje, ‘The Amalaita Bands: Some Criticism of the Native Police’, English in Africa, 3, 2 (1976): 59. My thanks to Dr Mokoena for pointing me to this passage.
11 The Natal Witness, 3 March 1848.
12 British Colonial Office, ‘Expenditures’, Natal Blue Books, Colonial Office: Pietermaritzburg, 1850, 98-102, and 1854, 180-185.
13 The use of the term ‘native constable’ was the primary designator for non-white members of the constabulary. It can be assumed that all of these were indigenous Africans, as Indian constables only appear in the colonial records beginning in the 1860s and are specifically distinguished as such.
14 Short summary of ‘Native Law’ in Natal can be found in N. Etherington, ‘The “Shepstone System” in the Colony of Natal and Beyond the Borders’, in A. Duminy and B. Guest, eds, Natal and Zululand from Earliest Times to 1910: A New History (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1989), 171–75.
15 Guy speculates that with the law’s passage, it marked ‘the end of the Shepstone era in the history of Natal’. See Guy, Theophilus Shepstone and the Forging of Natal, 457.
16 C. De B. Webb and J.B. Wright, eds, The James Stuart Archive Vol. 5: Of Recorded Oral Evidence Relating to the History of the Zulu and Neighboring Peoples (Pietermaritzburg: University Of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2001), 297, 320.
17 Guy equates this unit, which he denotes as the ‘Thintandaba’, with the Natal Native Police Corps. There remain some discrepancies in early descriptions of the Police Corps and this unit. Guy, Theophilus Shepstone and the Forging of Natal, 122.
18 For more on the volunteer movement of the mid-nineteenth century, see J. Ivey, ‘“Young Men like These … ”: The Volunteer Corps and the Emergence of the Settler Community in Colonial Natal’, South African Historical Journal, 70, 3 (2018): 475–90, https://doi.org/10.1080/02582473.2017.1389977.
19 Anderson and Killingray, Policing the Empire, 10–11.
20 C.F. Cadiz, Natal Ordinances, Laws, and Proclamations: Compiled and Edited Under the Authority and with the Sanction of His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor and the Honorable the Legislative Council, vol. I (Pietermaritzburg: W.M. Watson Government Printers, 1891), 250.
21 The trial was covered in the Witness in a series of reports every two days over the last week of December 1860. Budaza’s account and cross examination take up the majority of the testimony. The Natal Witness, 28 December 1860.
22 Ibid.
23 The Natal Witness, 30 December 1860.
24 Cadiz, Natal Ordinances, Laws, and Proclamations, I, 251.
25 Though no such title existed, there were six ‘Native Constables’ and two ‘Native Turnkeys’ on the payroll of the Country of Pietermaritzburg, all paid at £9 each. See British Colonial Office, ‘Civil Establishments’, Natal Blue Books (Colonial Office: Pietermaritzburg, 1861), 161-167.
26 The Natal Witness, 28 December 1860.
27 Ibid.
28 Though not uncommon during the conquest of Africa, Africans armed with firearms was a unique occurrence within Natal, whose government made major strides to keep firearms away from the indigenous population. Webb and Wright, The James Stuart Archive Vol. 5, 294.
29 For more on the history of the spear within Zulu military history, see D. Wylie, Myth of Iron: Shaka in History (Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2006), 217; J. Laband, Historical Dictionary of the Zulu Wars (Toronto: Scarecrow Press, 2009), 265; J. Ivey, ‘“Born out of Shaka’s Spear”: The Zulu Iklwa and Perceptions of Military Revolution in the Nineteenth Century’, Selected Papers of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, 1750-1850 (2020): 1–8. http://hdl.handle.net/1920/11898.
30 This proclamation was part of grander attempt to force Africans into presenting themselves in a more ‘civilized manner’, including the requirements to wear trousers (‘covering at least from the waist to the knee’) while in Pietermaritzburg and Durban. See ‘Proclamation By His Excellency John Scott, November 22, 1862’, The Natal Government Gazette, 2 December 1862.
31 The Natal Witness, 28 December 1859 and 1 January 1860.
32 The Natal Witness, 1 January 1861.
33 Pietermaritzburg Archives, South African National Archives, Attorney General’s Office of the Colony of Natal (PAR, SNA, AGO) 1/1/5 160A and 161A/1860.
34 The Natal Witness, 28 December 1859 and 1 January 1860.
35 The horse thief attempted to hide the horse in a kloof and leave the village without the animal in his possession, hence creating an alibi. It is implied that the ruse worked initially on the African constable; the horse thief was captured the next morning with the horse in his possession. ‘A Kafir Detective’, The Natal Witness, 17 February 1871.
36 PAR, AGO 1/8/10 86A, 87A, 88A, 89A/1869.
37 ‘The Queen v. Harcourt REVIEW’, The Natal Witness, 18 January 1861.
38 The Natal Witness, 9 August 1861 and 8 August 1862.
39 Registrar, Supreme Court, Pietermaritzburg (RSC), SNA RSC 1/5/73 1248/1868, RSC 1/5/98 1950/1881, and RSC 1/5/109 98/1883.
40 The Natal Witness, 18 and 26 January 1875; and Natal Department of Agriculture and Mines, The Agricultural Journal and Mining Record, vol. 3 (Pietermaritzburg: William Watson, 1901), 760.
41 Natal Department of Agriculture and Mines, Agricultural Journal and Mining Record, vol. 3, 780.
42 Ibid.
43 ‘The son of Budaza (Somveli’s brother) by one of his wives, has been found in a pool, his neck broken, evidently by violence. One of Budaza’s wives is suspected, as she had had a quarrel with the boy’s mother, and was seen near the pool on the day upon the boy (6 years old) was missed’. The Natal Witness, 12 September 1873.
44 Colonial Office, South Africa: Correspondence Relating to the Affairs of Natal & Zululand (London: G.E. Eyre & W. Spottiswoode, 1882), 45.
45 For more on this conflict and its ramifications for the future of the Zulu Kingdom, see J. Guy, The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom: The Civil War in Zululand, 1879–1884 (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1994), 105–23.
46 Firearms were severely restricted for Africans during this period. In 1883, only four guns were issued within whole colony by the Secretary for Native Affairs and the numbers unlikely substantially increased over the ensuing decade. ‘Report of the Secretary for Native Affairs’, Natal Blue Books (Colonial Office: Pietermaritzburg, 1883).
47 PAR, SNA I/1/41 1891/482.
48 While the search system within the Pietermaritzburg National Archives is not complete, I have looked extensively through nearly every report that mentions ‘police’ or ‘native police’ and other search terms within the database. I cannot claim to have done a complete search, but I am confident in my assertion that this is the same Budaza.
49 PAR, SNA 1/1/36 1894/894.
50 Perhaps the most famous example was Ngoza, who remains the archetype for appointed chiefdoms within Natal during this period. For more on Ngoza and his rise to prominence within the Shepstone system, see Guy, Theophilus Shepstone and the Forging of Natal, 289–90; J.E. Kelly, To Swim with Crocodiles: Land, Violence, and Belonging in South Africa, 1800–1996 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2018).
51 PAR, SNA I/1/35 1879/1886.
52 Ibid.
53 PAR, SNA I/1/41 1880/523.
54 Guy, Theophilus Shepstone and the Forging of Natal, 316.
55 For comparison, Manyosi Gcumisa’s territory near Table Mountain when he was elevated to chief in 1882 included 450 dwellings and, while sizable, was only a portion of the larger Qamu territory that had been under the purview of Mahoiza Mkhize since the 1860s. See Kelly, To Swim with Crocodiles, 42–43.
56 Despite my best efforts, I have found no corroborating information in the Killie Campbell Collection, the James Stuart Archives or the Durban Archives. This is only exacerbated by the lack of certainty regarding Budaza’s geographic location during the arrest, or his specific association with the ‘Enhlangwini tribe’.
57 M.-R. Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 23.
58 M. Francis, ‘Silencing the Past: Historical and Archaeological Colonisation of the Southern San in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa’, Anthropology Southern Africa, 32, 3–4 (1 January 2009): 106–16, https://doi.org/10.1080/23323256.2009.11499985; S.E. Couper, ‘“An Embarrassment to the Congresses?”: The Silencing of Chief Albert Luthuli and the Production of ANC History’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 35, 2 (1 June 2009): 331–48, https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070902919884.
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Jacob Ivey
JACOB IVEY an Assistant Professor of History at Fairmont State University in West Virginia, USA. A PhD from West Virginia University, his research focuses on the British Empire in South Africa, and broader issues of race in relation to South Africa and the Black Diaspora across the globe. He has published in South African Historical Journal, Britain and the World, Florida Historical Quarterly, and the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era and is currently working on two projects. One is his current book project, contracted with Palgrave Macmillan's “Britain and the World” series, on the Natal Constabulary in early Colonial Natal during the nineteenth century. The other is on the history of anti-apartheid movements in Florida in the 1980s, tentatively titled From Sun City to the Sunshine State: Florida and the Anti-Apartheid Movement.