The ‘bullets to water’ belief complex: a pan-southern African cognate epistemology for protective medicines and the control of projectiles

ABSTRACT

Remarkable similarities across colonial encounters where Africans believed projectiles could be influenced by ritual practices (medicines, behaviours, observances) demand enquiry into their conception and trajectory. Although suggestion of pan-subcontinental phenomena may elicit suspicion of a generalisation, here evidence is examined from the late-independent and colonial periods that shows that a general belief, held cognate between groups, may indeed have existed. The focus is on precolonial¹ southern African beliefs in the manipulation of projectiles and how these may have affected ritual responses to firearms during colonisation. At least a millennium of interactions between hunters, herders and farmers appear to have resulted in commonly held beliefs, albeit with differential emphases. From first contact, and into sustained colonisation, it became necessary for Africans to highlight and/or adapt indigenous beliefs as mechanisms by which to cope with firearms and settler aggressive expansion.

KEYWORDS:

• Gun
• arrow
• spear
• African farmer
• San Bushman
• wardoctor
• traditional medicine

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank our colleagues and interpreters Ntate Puseletso Lecheko and Ntate Daniel Mkhize in Matatiele, as well as Professor David Pearce at the Rock Art Research Institute (RARI) and Geoff Blundell. We thank Rachel King, and John Wright and Jill Weintroub for comments on drafts of this article. Any omissions or errors are entirely the authors’.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For discussion of what constitutes precolonial vs colonial era (owing to ethnohistories’ beginning  with the latter), see Hamilton and Leibhammer (2016), 13–48.

2. The term ‘San’ is used as the ethnonym most widely accepted in academic studies. It is acknowledged that it is preferable to use the individual group names rather than a collective term, and where possible this has been done. However, much of the literature fails to provide that level of detail about group identity and in these cases, the collective term ‘San’ has been used.

3. These interviews were conducted with the assistance of a translator, Ntate Puseletso Lecheko who speaks both SeSotho and isiXhosa. Ethics clearance has been granted for these interviews by the University of the Witwatersrand. Interviewees were predominantly men aged 64 and above. Warfare is a predominantly male activity; thus, most interviewees were men excepting the case of traditional healers where we interviewed two women (Sinclair Thomson 2016, 25). Owing to the sensitive nature of some of the material discussed, we preserve the interviewees’ anonymity. We do not venture into the moral propriety of the use of such medicines for any purpose (see e.g. Ashforth 2005).

4. For the Maphumulo/Bambatha uprising, see Guy (2005); for the Bulhoek massacre, see Steyn (2000), 196; cf. Mchunu (2015).

Additional information

Funding

The MARA programme (Matatiele Archaeology and Rock Art) is funded by the South African National Research Foundation (NRF) African Origins Platform [grant 82595]. Sinclair-Thomson was further funded by Geoff Blundell's National Research Foundation African Origins Platform [grant 150925143023].

Notes on contributors

Brent Sinclair-Thomson

Brent Sinclair -Thomson is an MSc candidate at the University of the Witwatersrand, specialising in rock art. His current research for his Masters’ dissertation is a focus on depictions of firearms in colonial-era rock art of the north-eastern Cape and how guns were understood by indigenous southern Africans. His previous research focuses on images of shields and spears in Eastern Cape rock art, as well as how members of African farming communities remember, and forget, the now extinct San of the Eastern Cape Drakensberg.

Sam Challis

Sam Challis is Senior Researcher at the Rock Art Research Institute, Wits University. His focus is on the interaction between hunter-gatherers, pastoralists and farmers, as well as Europeans, as expressed in rock art around the world. His DPhil focused on the impact of the horse on southern African hunter-gatherers, and his research programme in the Eastern Cape aims to redress the balance of this neglected region while training local community Field Technicians.