South Africa’s settler-colonial present: Khoisan revivalism and the question of indigeneity

ABSTRACT

South Africa’s settler-colonial past is widely acknowledged. And yet, commonplace understandings of the post-apartheid era and a focus on the end of segregation make an appraisal of settler colonialism in present-day South Africa difficult and controversial. Nonetheless, we argue that an understanding of South Africa’s “settler-colonial present” is urgent and needed. We suggest that settler colonialism as a specific mode of domination survives apartheid. In particular, we focus on the recent revival and political mobilisation of indigenous Khoisan identity and cultural heritage to show that settler colonialism and apartheid should be understood as distinct yet overlapping modes of domination. A settler-colonial mode of governance aiming at “the elimination of the native” in two interrelated domains, dispossession and transfer, characterises past and present South Africa. An understanding of this continuity offers opportunities for an original interpretation of both Khoisan revivalism and contemporary South African society.

KEYWORDS:

• Settler colonialism
• khoisan revivalism
• post-apartheid
• dispossession
• transfer

Acknowledgments

We thank Berber Bevernage, Harry Wels, William Ellis, Mohamed Adhikari, Eline Mestdagh, Eva Willems and Marie-Gabrielle Verbergt and the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. While some reject “coloured” as an imposed identity, others celebrate it as an identifier (see Adhikari 2005).

2. A similar argument is made by Todd Shepard in his The Invention of Decolonisation (2006). For Shepard, decolonisation was invented so that settler colonialism could be obscured.

3. In this we rely on a similar critique offered by Mahmood Mamdani (2001) regarding the ways in which the post-colonial African successor states inherited “native” and “settler” and retained them as foundational categories.

4. Considering the status of African-Americans in the U.S., Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (2012, 7) observe: “[s]ettlers are diverse, not just of white European descent, and include people of color, even from other colonial contexts.”

5. We are aware that this argument resonates with bogus apartheid ideas pertaining to “Bantu-colonisation.” The claim then was that Bantu-speaking people and whites had entered South Africa simultaneously, that they could not be considered indigenous, and that the claims of whites were as good as those of others. We do not intend to replicate apartheid-era discourse and apartheid’s denial of indigeneity and we do not: it is exactly to counter contemporary arguments about a denial of indigeneity that we underscore the ongoing relevance of settler colonialism.

6. For more on South African land reform see Ntsebeza and Hall (2007).

7. As classification was based on the subjective interpretation of the skin colour of the individual involved, Khoisan survivors often ended up being (re)classified as black or white (for more on these processes, see Besten 2009, 135–139).

8. For example, some Khoisan also joined the “commandos” operating on colonial frontiers. The victims of these death squads often included the Khoisan (Adhikari 2011). Cavanagh’s (2013a) study of the Orange River similarly shows that Khoisan were at certain periods of time themselves the ones doing the dispossessing.

9. An emphasis on segregation does not necessarily follow a logic of elimination. Apartheid was premised on physical and cultural distance between whites and non-whites. However, Bantu-speaking people supplied the bulk of the labour force. For this reason, while they were severely exploited and demeaned, they were not “eliminated” like the Khoisan were.

10. Though radically distinct from homelands, some coloured “reserves” were also created (see Sharp 1977 for more on the reserve system).

11. By the same logic one could argue that Khoisan are the people that are left after a process of unsorting. If the Khoisan were assimilated and “acculturated […] out of existence,” Khoisan revivalism can be thought of as a process of dissimilation (Marks 1972, 77).

12. Afrikaners have claimed indigeneity too. In the past, the argument was used by Afrikaner nationalists to frame British settlers as colonial invaders (Pillay 2004, 220). More recently, a delegation of Afrikaners even went to the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations to seek indigenous status. However, no longer in charge, they could now claim a “marginalised” status in the post-apartheid era. They continue claiming autochthony; see, e.g., https://unpo.org/members/8148.

13. Some San groups have begun to refer to themselves as “Aboriginal” in order to distance themselves from Khoisan revivalists (see Besten 2006, 291). Indigeneity and aboriginality are cognate terms but they are used differently across diverse contexts. We are aware that in South Africa reference is sometime made to “Aboriginal San” and “Indigenous Khoi.” In this paper we use them interchangeably to address a relational category that comes into existence with the settler-colonial encounter.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lorenzo Veracini

Lorenzo Veracini is Associate Professor of History at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne. His research focuses on the comparative history of colonial systems and settler colonialism as a mode of domination. He has authored Israel and Settler Society (2006), Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (2010), and The Settler Colonial Present (2015). Lorenzo co-edited The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism (2016), manages the settler colonial studies blog, and is Founding Editor of Settler Colonial Studies. [ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3481-8535]

Rafael Verbuyst

Rafael Verbuyst is a PhD candidate at Ghent University and the University of the Western Cape. His research interests sit at the intersection of history and anthropology. His current project examines articulations of indigeneity and Khoisan revivalism in post-apartheid Cape Town. He has been conducting ethnographic fieldwork in South Africa since 2014. His work has previously appeared in Anthropology Southern Africa and New Contree. [ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1987-1642]