tag:theconversation.com,2011:/es/topics/xhosa-51899/articlesXhosa – The Conversation2023-08-07T13:59:55Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2104162023-08-07T13:59:55Z2023-08-07T13:59:55ZUmlungu: the colourful history of a word used to describe white people in South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540800/original/file-20230802-23936-6zixs7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wreck of the British ship Charlotte in Algoa Bay, South Africa, 1854. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Print Collector/Heritage Images via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In South Africa “umlungu” is a word that’s commonly used to refer to white people. It comes from isiXhosa, the language of the country’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Xhosa">Xhosa people</a>. It’s always been a mystery how the word originated or what it actually means because no human beings were referred to as umlungu before the arrival of white people in the country by ship. There was, however, a word “ubulungu” which meant “that deposited out by the sea” or sea scum.</p>
<p>While it may have been considered impolite in the past, <a href="https://www.dispatchlive.co.za/news/2016-11-21-experts-say-umlungu-is-not-negative-in-meaning/">today</a> umlungu is a polite word. Many white South Africans don’t mind calling themselves umlungu – there are even T-shirt ranges bearing the word. And it’s now also commonly used to refer to black people – meaning “my employer” or “a wealthy person”. So how did umlungu come to change its meaning?</p>
<p>As a linguist who teaches and studies isiXhosa, I recently published a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2989/16073614.2022.2153709">study</a> that considers the word from a sociolinguistic perspective. Sociolinguistics can be <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Introducing_Language_and_Society.html?id=gA4jAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">defined</a> as the link between language and society. I chose to frame my study through this theory because a language is not independent of the people who speak it. Individuals shape words to reflect the changing context of their society. </p>
<p>The word umlungu has taken on multiple meanings as a result of historical events, showing how language evolves through social interactions. </p>
<h2>Colonial times</h2>
<p>According to one <a href="https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2023.2188233">study</a>, the term umlungu arose from an incident in which shipwrecked white people were deposited from the sea. The sea’s tendency is to toss anything out that is dirty in order to clean itself. The shipwrecked white people were given the name “abelungu/umlungu”, which <a href="https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2023.2188233">means</a> “filth that is rejected by the ocean and deposited on the shore”. Some of those shipwrecked remained and the clan name Abelungu <a href="http://vital.seals.ac.za:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:28312?site_name=GlobalView">was used</a> to record their children.</p>
<p>The words umlungu and abelungu (plural) are used by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nguni">Nguni</a> people across South Africa. The Nguni are a large cluster of Bantu-speaking ethnic groups in southern Africa who have played an important role in the country’s history and culture. The Nguni ethnic groupings include the Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi and Ndebele. These subgroups share linguistic and cultural similarities while adhering to their own traditions and practices. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za/handle/10413/20032">Zulu historians</a>, white people arriving in South Africa were called “abelumbi” (magicians). This is because <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/shaka-zulu">Shaka Zulu</a>, the powerful leader of the Zulu Kingdom, witnessed a white person killing a man without touching him (with a gun). He stated that only a witch could kill a person without any physical contact. As a result, he called them abelumbi, which was later altered to abelungu (philanthropists) as time passed.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/shaka-zulu-is-back-in-pop-culture-how-the-famous-king-has-been-portrayed-over-the-decades-207417">Shaka Zulu is back in pop culture – how the famous king has been portrayed over the decades</a>
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<p>Various events throughout the colonial era forced black people into poverty, particularly after the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nongqawuse">Nongqawuse</a> episode. Nongqawuse was a Xhosa prophetess who, in 1856, had a vision that if the Xhosa people killed all their cattle and destroyed their crops, the spirits would drive the British colonisers out of South Africa and bring about a new era of prosperity. Many Xhosa people then <a href="https://www.siyabona.com/eastern-cape-xhosa-cattle-killing.html">slaughtered</a> their own cattle and destroyed their own crops. Some people died because of hunger.</p>
<h2>Apartheid</h2>
<p>This poverty was exacerbated under <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> – an organised system of white minority rule in South Africa that imposed racial segregation and discrimination from 1948 until the early 1990s. </p>
<p>An umlungu was an esteemed member of society during the apartheid era because of the power and authority that they possessed. It’s my view that because of the apartheid system, black people were psychologically influenced to perceive everything linked with a white person as better and of a higher standard. </p>
<p>Due to the reality of colonisation and apartheid, most black South Africans were forced to work for white people and so an umlungu came to be defined as a white boss or employer. With time, this came to include all bosses or employers – even black people came to refer to a black boss as umlungu.</p>
<h2>Today</h2>
<p>I argue that the views of black people toward white people had a significant impact on the word changing and gaining numerous positive meanings. The concept that anything finer, richer and whiter in colour is umlungu has given rise to new positive connotations for the term. The word umlungu today can refer to an employer, a black person of a certain ethnicity with a lighter skin colour, someone of higher standing, a wealthy person – or simply a white person. </p>
<p>A black person who owns and runs a farm like a white person using a labour tenancy arrangement, for example, is <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/people-and-whites">referred to</a> as an umlungu. University students may be <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/ubuntu-abantu-abelungu">referred to</a> as abelungu since they represent class mobility and luxury. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/zulu-vs-xhosa-how-colonialism-used-language-to-divide-south-africas-two-biggest-ethnic-groups-204969">Zulu vs Xhosa: how colonialism used language to divide South Africa's two biggest ethnic groups</a>
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<p>Xhosa people have further adapted the term, with some naming their children Nobelungu (the one who is of white people), Umlungwana (young white person) or Mlungukazi (white woman).</p>
<p>Social class and status influence the evolution of language. Change is also related to the relative safety of a group’s standing in society, with lower-status groups generally imitating higher-status ones. As a result, those identified as abelungu, particularly among the black population, are seen as having ascended the social ladder. </p>
<p>“Umlungu” demonstrates how the meaning of a word can change to reflect a changing society. Language is not static, it is a growing and shifting way of reflecting the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andiswa Mvanyashe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The word shows that language isn’t static, it evolves to reflect developments in a society.Andiswa Mvanyashe, Senior lecturer in Languages and Literature, Nelson Mandela UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2023642023-04-12T13:41:03Z2023-04-12T13:41:03ZSouth Africans have starkly unequal access to a healthy diet - the solution requires tackling deep-seated historical injustice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518726/original/file-20230331-26-f4s645.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa has a food crisis. The <a href="https://www.futureoffood.ox.ac.uk/what-food-system">food system</a> - made up of all of the activities and actors involved in the production, processing, transportation, selling, consumption and disposal of food - produces starkly unequal access to nutritious foods.</p>
<p>As a result, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/15528014.2023.2175483?needAccess=true&role=button#page=5">many households in the country cannot afford</a> a healthy diet, <a href="https://dhsprogram.com/publications/publication-fr337-dhs-final-reports.cfm">27% of children under five are stunted</a>, and the <a href="https://dhsprogram.com/publications/publication-fr337-dhs-final-reports.cfm">prevalence of diet-related diseases is rising</a> rapidly. </p>
<p>The food system contributes to <a href="https://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/cc0071en">pollution and climate change</a> through the use of agro-chemicals, fossil fuels for transport, processing and refrigeration, as well as unsustainable packaging. On top of this, over one-third of the <a href="https://www.csir.co.za/food-supply-south-africa-wasted-shows-new-csir-study">food is wasted</a>. These harms <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/?page_id=1854&PPN=03-00-14">disproportionately affect</a> poor people and women. Black-headed households are seven times more likely than white-headed households to have <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/?page_id=1854&PPN=03-00-14">inadequate access to food</a>.</p>
<p>This inequitable distribution of the benefits and harms of the food system is called <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262518666/food-justice/">food injustice</a>. It is also a violation of the <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/constitution/chapter-2-bill-rights">constitutional right to food</a>.</p>
<p>To date, attempts to address the food crisis have had limited success. Measures such as emergency food parcels, soup kitchens and food garden projects do help to meet immediate needs, but they <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/an-empty-plate-why-we-are-losing-the-battle-for-our-food-system-why-it-matters-and-how-we-can-win-it-back/">do not address the underlying causes</a> of food injustice. The same is true of social grants, which are <a href="https://foodsecurity.ac.za/news/why-south-africas-social-grants-arent-eradicating-malnutrition/">insufficient</a> to tackle food insecurity.</p>
<p>I argue in my <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15528014.2023.2175483">ongoing research</a> that these structural challenges are rooted in colonialism and capitalism. I use the term <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09502380601162548?casa_token=TJ1LY3kEDFIAAAAA%3A2VIBhIVSTJU5oG9_eYCOrhuy05gmGVS3y7Qi54NBparBm4Jinqf10Wq26pwYw0fDtw9OQm1QvWTE2g">“coloniality”</a> to refer to the persistence of patterns of capitalist, racial and patriarchal power that continue to inform who controls the food system, and who has access to good food.</p>
<p>My research seeks to expand our knowledge of those colonial origins. Historical texts and archival materials, despite their Eurocentric bias, give clues about precolonial, indigenous food systems and how these were violently disrupted by colonialism. By speaking to elders who still know about traditional foodways, we can learn more about indigenous ingredients as well as traditional ways of gathering, producing, preparing and eating food. Most importantly, elders can help us reconnect with the worldview and values that underpinned indigenous food systems.</p>
<h2>Colonialism, violence and dispossession</h2>
<p>Food has been central to the colonial project in South Africa since the 1500s, when <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=mkkKAQAAIAAJ&dq=Before%20van%20Riebeeck%3A%20Callers%20at%20South%20Africa&source=gbs_book_other_versions">European ships</a> carrying spices from Asia to Europe stopped at the Cape to replenish food and water. Once <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jan-van-riebeeck">Jan van Riebeeck</a> established the first European settlement on behalf of the Dutch East India Company at the Cape in 1652 and <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/The_Old_Company_s_Garden_at_the_Cape_and/Di8MygEACAAJ?hl=en">started a garden</a> to provision the ships, the process of colonial conquest, forcible removal of indigenous people from their land and exploitation of their labour began.</p>
<p>Both the Dutch and the British seized vast swathes of land, often <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/The_Record_Or_A_Series_of_Official_Paper/vpRRAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">granting it to European farmers</a> and then charging them with defending it against the erstwhile owners.</p>
<p>Seizure of land from the indigenous Khoi and San people was justified on the basis that they failed to “properly use” the land <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=mkkKAQAAIAAJ&dq=Before%20van%20Riebeeck%3A%20Callers%20at%20South%20Africa&source=gbs_book_other_versions">by cultivating it</a>.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519089/original/file-20230403-1329-a3rhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519089/original/file-20230403-1329-a3rhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519089/original/file-20230403-1329-a3rhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519089/original/file-20230403-1329-a3rhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519089/original/file-20230403-1329-a3rhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519089/original/file-20230403-1329-a3rhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519089/original/file-20230403-1329-a3rhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A display of seeds saved by small-scale farmers in Limpopo, South Africa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brittany Kesselman</span></span>
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<p>Colonialism brought with it large-scale, labour-intensive <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533958308458332?journalCode=rsdy20">agriculture for domestic markets and export</a> to Europe and its other colonies. Colonists coerced locals into working on European farms. In the Eastern Cape, the British waged <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/The_Struggle_for_the_Eastern_Cape_1800_1.html?id=KImhZwEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">outright war</a> against the Xhosa people, destroying their crops in a scorched earth policy designed to convert them into landless labourers. </p>
<p>Later, authorities imposed <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02590123.1986.11964243?casa_token=TsTmT_jtCnAAAAAA:a1y4xY-9bqT4lXndTTllxRubQ7_uJ5UNl0GJ0Zm_itqRhqYAuZTb1-LsL6mFpmBqbX4_kXn1zAhcvg">the hut or poll tax</a> to force self-sufficient African farmers into the wage economy. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533958308458332?journalCode=rsdy20">Forced labour</a> in the form of enslaved Africans and Asians, indentured labourers or captured indigenous people, <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/Travels_in_the_Interior_of_South_Africa/7l42MwAACAAJ?hl=en">including children</a>, became common.</p>
<p>The spread of white-owned farms <a href="https://www.academia.edu/14430020/THE_COMPANY_S_GARDEN_AND_THE_EX_CHANGE_OF_NATURE_AND_KNOWLEDGE_AT_CAPE_OF_GOOD_HOPE_1652_1700_">transformed the landscape</a>, replacing indigenous plants to cultivate wheat, barley, maize, fruits, wine grapes, sugar and other commodities. Indigenous people lost access to areas where they had previously gathered wild foods, hunted, farmed and herded cattle. They also lost access to water.</p>
<p>There was a strong cultural component to colonialism’s disruption of traditional foodways. Europeans expressed contempt for indigenous foods and eating habits. The missionaries perpetuated this in their churches and schools, imposing European crops, farming styles and ways of eating as part of their <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/za/academic/subjects/religion/church-history/missionary-labours-and-scenes-southern-africa?format=PB&isbn=9781108007948">“civilizing”</a> work. This disdain for indigenous foods has carried on into the present, with traditional foods seen as backwards or <a href="https://repository.uwc.ac.za/xmlui/handle/10566/4302">poverty foods</a>.</p>
<h2>Decolonising food systems</h2>
<p>More than 25 years into democracy, South Africa’s food system continues to reflect the highly unequal patterns of power and exploitation from the colonial era, in terms of both domestic inequalities and the country’s place in the global food system. </p>
<p>The skewed <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/land-matters-south-africa%E2%80%99s-failed-land-reforms-and-road-ahead/9781776095964">distribution of agricultural land</a> reflects colonial and apartheid patterns of white ownership. Much of the best produce, including <a href="https://www.namc.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/NAMC-DAFF-TradeProbe-69-May-Issue.pdf">most of the fruit</a>, is exported to Europe, while most South Africans <a href="https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-019-7254-7">cannot afford</a> to meet their nutritional requirements. The food system is highly <a href="https://repository.uwc.ac.za/xmlui/handle/10566/4597">concentrated</a>, with a few large national and international corporations dominating food processing and retail. </p>
<p>The call to decolonise food systems is <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21683565.2018.1468380">growing globally</a>. Indigenous peoples around the world want to shift the fundamental worldview that informs what foods are eaten, and how they are obtained and distributed. </p>
<p>This requires moving from a capitalist, profit-driven food system in which food is simply a commodity, to one <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/pgdt/17/1-2/article-p173_173.xml">based on values</a> such as collectivity, reciprocity, kinship with the natural world, spirituality, and respect for the land. </p>
<p>In indigenous food systems, people often worked collectively – for example, in collective work parties known as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44126995">ilima</a> in isiZulu and isiXhosa or <a href="https://uir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/14451">letsema</a> in Setswana. They held rituals such as the first fruits ceremony to express their gratitude for the harvest. When collecting wild greens or fruits, they understood the importance of taking only what was needed and leaving enough behind for other people, animals, and for the survival of the plants.</p>
<p>When they hunted, they used every part of the animal and were shocked to see European colonists waste so much of it. People had ways of preserving and storing foods to ensure they would have enough during leaner times. </p>
<p>These kinds of values, and the practices based on them, would serve as a good basis from which to imagine and create a more just and sustainable food system, with all of the transformative changes that will entail.</p>
<p><em><strong>(*)</strong>: Different groups in different parts of what is now South Africa had very different diets, for cultural as well as ecological reasons. The foodways of the San or Khoi in the Western Cape, for instance, were very different from those of the Batswana to the north. It is not my intention to suggest that all indigenous food systems were the same, but rather to suggest that they shared certain similarities, and that they were violently disrupted by colonialism</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202364/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research received funding from the South African National Research Foundation. </span></em></p>The inequitable distribution of the benefits and harms of the food system is a violation of the constitutional right to food.Brittany Kesselman, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1373192020-05-15T08:57:12Z2020-05-15T08:57:12ZThe arrival of British settlers 200 years ago continues to cast a shadow over South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334630/original/file-20200513-156651-1ckcqx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 1820 Settler Monument in Makhanda, Eastern Cape, commemmorates the arrival of 5,000 British colonial settlers.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hoberman Collection/Universal Images Group/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Two hundred years ago 5,000 people from Britain were settled in the south eastern part of South Africa in an area around present-day Makhanda and Port Alfred, then called the ‘Zuurveld’, by the British colonial authorities. To some South Africans (and particularly to many of their descendants) they are heroised as having brought development and ‘civilization’ to the area. </p>
<p>But should South Africa celebrate or mourn their arrival and legacy?</p>
<p>The settlers were allotted land which African people had occupied for millenia. The western Cape of South Africa had long experienced the dispossession of indigenous land under the regime of merchant capitalism of the Dutch East India Company <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Colonial-Origins-Reconsiderations-Southern-African/dp/0813917352">from the mid 1600s</a>. But British colonialism ushered in powerful and devastating new dynamics. </p>
<p>From roughly the 1770s, wandering Dutch-speaking farmers tried to settle east of the Cape Colony. But for 40 years, their new and strong neighbours, the amaXhosa, resisted their efforts. They fought each other in 100 years of wars, <a href="https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/house-phalo-history-xhosa-people/author/peires/">which left the Xhosa weakened </a>.</p>
<p>Once the British took over in 1806, via diplomatic agreements in Europe, everything changed. In the first great removal in South African history, the Xhosa were dispossessed. It began with the expulsion of 1811/1812. What followed was an additional 70 years of war. </p>
<p>The Zuurveld was the crucible of South African history in the sense of being the area where the country’s diverse peoples first encountered each other. It was also the crucible of settler capitalism.</p>
<p>So what should we do with this 200th anniversary? It offers an invitation to sober reflection on where South Africa has travelled as a nation over two centuries and how the savage inequalities established in the past, continue in its present.</p>
<h2>Scorched earth policy</h2>
<p>This first round of expulsion was particularly cruel. Crops were destroyed, cattle confiscated, homes burnt. This led to 20,000 people under Chief Ndlambe’s leadership being forced across the Fish River and later the Keiskamma and ultimately the Kei. </p>
<p>This ‘scorched earth policy’ has been described by the victors as <a href="https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/they-were-south-africans/author/john-bond/">‘a superbly executed campaign’</a>.</p>
<p>British colonialism drove this process of dispossession, employing unprecedented levels of force which soon led to yet another war. As tensions escalated, the British simply went over the borders and seized Xhosa cattle. At the beginning of 1818, the largest to date of such raids saw 2,000 head of cattle taken. By November that year, the number of cattle taken by force from the amaXhosa in yet another raid was 23,000. </p>
<p>The ensuing fifth ‘frontier war’ in 1819 left the British once again as military victors. The colonial forces nominally controlled the old Zuurveld, as well as new stretches of land beyond the Fish River boundary.</p>
<p>By then, experience had shown that the amaXhosa would not simply stay away from their former homes by diplomatic agreement. The conquered land could only be maintained in British hands by filling it up with its own people. </p>
<p>In other parts of the empire indirect rule, using indigenous leadership, often worked. But this had proven impossible in the borderline areas of the Eastern Cape. The settlement of the 5,000 British in 1820 was a direct outcome of the latest war. It was to be the largest settler scheme undertaken in the whole of the colonial era. </p>
<p>After 1820 a small elite group of British settlers built on this process to create a new and savage social order: settler capitalism.</p>
<h2>Settler capitalism</h2>
<p>Capitalism involves the process whereby both the means of production and labour become commodities. While in this case the initial dispossession was driven by colonialism, the process of commoditisation was driven by an elite that developed their own brand of settler capitalism.</p>
<p>Deeply embedded in British colonialism, these settler elites soon articulated and perpetuated a virulent racism. It followed hot on the tail of the most massive attack the amaXhosa had ever waged against the Colony. On Christmas Eve 1834, 12,000 to 15,000 armed invaders crossed the full length of the Fish River boundary in one huge wave. They burnt settler farmhouses, killed the occupants and confiscated livestock. </p>
<p>It was an all-out attempt to get rid of the unwelcome neighbours. Most of the direct engagements in the Zuurveld forced the British settlers to abandon virtually the whole country east of Algoa Bay, saving only the towns of Grahamstown and Fort Beaufort. The Xhosa now carried guns as well as their assegais and shields.</p>
<p>But in 1835 the colonial forces soon went on the offensive and cleared the Xhosa not only out of the Zuurveld area once again, but also from strictly Xhosa-occupied lands further east. They suffered severely when the British applied the same strategy as in 1811 – a scorched earth policy which destroyed their economic base. </p>
<p>As a result, many were reduced to eating herbs and roots and forced to seek employment in the Colony from the very people who had destroyed them. Once again, the large-scale importation of British troops secured a military victory for them after nine months of fighting.</p>
<h2>A militarised racism</h2>
<p>The deep-seated racism of settler capitalism was linked to war. The war of 1834-35 was the first in which the settlers participated, and it created a particularly vitriolic racism. In the words of one of the settler elite, Mitford Bowker, the Xhosa were <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=LDoXNwaUZ_UC&pg=PA123&lpg=PA123&dq=Mitford+Bowker,+the+Xhosa+were+%E2%80%98ruthless,+worthless+savages%27.&source=bl&ots=uuTgXiZl1A&sig=ACfU3U34O6enJwrCxsLrbK-u8r7D8-kRuA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjo4NSiibPpAhUTHMAKHUYECXgQ6AEwAXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Mitford%20Bowker%2C%20the%20Xhosa%20were%20%E2%80%98ruthless%2C%20worthless%20savages'.&f=false">‘ruthless, worthless savages’</a>.</p>
<p>The landscape around Grahamstown was the scene of many violent encounters in the wars of dispossession and the settler elite were directly involved as soldiers, as a source of supplies to the British forces and as members of the colonial administration. They had the most to gain, in the form of new lands available for their own use. Some of these same people made small fortunes as war profiteers and war mongers. Overall, as Timothy Keegan <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Colonial-Origins-Reconsiderations-Southern-African/dp/0813917352">wrote</a>, the British settler elite, were marked as exhibiting “acquisitive, warmongering propensities”.</p>
<p>This settler elite promoted their personal economic interests. They did so initially through the occupation and commoditisation of Xhosa land and through establishing and extending lucrative trading networks. Land speculation was extensive and involved buying up conquered lands and establishing sheep and cattle farms. Cattle sales and wool exports became the basis of many settler fortunes. Between 1837 and 1845 <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Colonial-Origins-Reconsiderations-Southern-African/dp/0813917352">property prices in the Eastern Cape quadrupled</a>. </p>
<p>Settler capitalism also involved the incorporation and exploitation of the amaXhosa as wage labourers. </p>
<p>The war of 1835 resulted in the importation of 16,000 amaMfengu as cheap labour for the colonists, while the war of 1846 concluded with <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Frontiers-Epic-South-Africas-Creation-Tragedy/21545276334/bd">major labour recruitment among the defeated amaXhosa</a>. Settler capitalism also involved the establishment of the financial institutions and infrastructure to promote speculation and trade. </p>
<p>The new social order that emerged was defined by racism, primitive accumulation and ‘free’ labour. It involved a continual displacement and transformation of social relations. What historian Clifton Crais calls <a href="https://repository.nwu.ac.za/handle/10394/5405">‘racial capitalism’</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>tore up communally based societies and began to replace them with a single colonial order. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is not hard to see the roots of the 20th century apartheid policies in the legacy of the settlers. From 1811, they advocated total domination and geographical separation along race and colour lines. Over the entire 19th century, the principles of dispossession, accumulation and domination grew and affected more and more land and people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137319/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Society, Work & Politics Institute (SWOP) receives funding from the Ford Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julia Wells does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It is not hard to see the roots of 20th century apartheid policies in the legacy of the British settlers.Jacklyn Cock, Professor Emerita in Sociology and Honorary Research Professor in SWOP, University of the WitwatersrandJulia Wells, Associate Professor Emeritus and Head, Isikhumbuzo Applied History Unit, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1095992019-01-30T13:59:12Z2019-01-30T13:59:12ZThe story of the enigmatic man who founded southern Africa’s largest church<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255593/original/file-20190125-108351-qlrdt6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">ZCC members at Moria City.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sowetan/Edward Maahlamela</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every Easter weekend, <a href="https://letabaherald.co.za/51203/photos-millions-converge-moria/">several millions</a> of Zion Christian Church (ZCC) faithful from across southern Africa descend on “Moria city”, the church’s capital in the north of the country, for their annual pilgrimage.</p>
<p>The church, founded by Engenas Lekganyane <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=w8jeCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=retief+muller+zcc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjWg_XP1obgAhVPnq0KHdDkDCoQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=retief%20muller%20zcc&f=false">in 1925</a>, is “the largest indigenous religious movement in southern Africa.” An estimated one in ten <a href="http://artsweb.bham.ac.uk/aanderson/publications/prophetic_healing_and_the_growth.htm">South Africans is a member</a>, according to University Allan Anderson, Professor of Theology at University of Birmingham.</p>
<p>There are two branches of the church. The main one is led by the founder’s grandson, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1982/04/20/s-africas-blacks-turn-to-religion-as-expression-of-spriritual-rebellion/2571ecef-f4c3-4033-9036-e8b35517797e/?utm_term=.583ba0648684">Bishop Barnabas Lekganyane (b. 1955)</a> The breakaway St. Engenas ZCC is headed by <a href="http://www.observer.co.za/st-engenas-zcc-donates-classroom-to-mitchell-house/">his namesake and great-grandson</a>.</p>
<p>Both of these competing branches are headquartered at Moria, two kilometres apart on the same farm on which Engenas died and was buried. They hold separate pilgrimages and other events. </p>
<p>The regular members of the main branch are expected to wear <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Lekganyane+symbols&rlz=1C1NHXL_enZA711ZA711&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=kqZmqnUgBi6GAM%253A%252CYRbgjXys5NUY4M%252C_&usg=AI4_-kSWlBr3N0LS0LuaJeMB0nfyVAGeQQ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjo6sGYwoHgAhWtShUIHVjVCn4Q9QEwAHoECAAQBA#imgrc=kqZmqnUgBi6GAM:">Star badges</a> at all times. For their part the St Engenas members sport <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Engenas+church+badge&rlz=1C1NHXL_enZA711ZA711&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=xbkV8JWNi6vPbM%253A%252ChjWqISYg-prxrM%252C_&usg=AI4_-kRbBSA85mNJqMMbWhyQNxQt9GmVUQ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi0sunTwoHgAhWnVBUIHRhXBZQQ9QEwAHoECAQQBA#imgrc=xbkV8JWNi6vPbM:">Dove badges</a>. Both organisations are similar in theology – a fusion of Christianity and traditional African beliefs. They prohibit drinking, smoking and eating pork, among other practices. The Star section <a href="https://folklife.si.edu/resources/festival1997/faithin.htm">has a distinctive men’s organisation</a>. </p>
<p>The unrelenting growth of the ZCC has essentially sidelined the traditional Protestant churches that introduced Christianity to southern Africa. In addition to their vast membership base across the region, they also control extensive business empires in areas such as transport, agribusiness and insurance. </p>
<p>But, even though Lekganyane was central to the redefinition of Christianity in southern Africa, his life story has been extremely difficult to track down. Few written records have survived. In addition, the ZCC has always been secretive. Members are forbidden from discussing the church with outsiders.</p>
<p>Church writings are restricted to members and still cannot be found in public libraries. Researchers, from the 1940s onwards, were also stifled as the church sought to maintain tight control over its message and practices. </p>
<p>My new <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Engenas-Lekganyane-Early-ZCC-Unauthorized/dp/1641532211/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1547134934&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=engines+lekganyane">book</a>, <em>Engenas Lekganyane and the Early ZCC: An Unauthorized History</em> sheds light on the enigmatic figure and foundations of his church. The full biography became possible after a substantial cache of new documentation emerged about <a href="https://www.academia.edu/14338013/Engenas_Lekganyane_and_the_Early_ZCC_Oral_Texts_and_Documents">Engenas</a> and <a href="https://www.academia.edu/35243058/Edward_Lekganyane_and_the_ZCC_Newspaper_Articles_in_Naledi_ya_Batswana_1946-60">the ZCC</a> in the last few years. </p>
<h2>Who was Engenas Lekganyane?</h2>
<p>The Lekganyanes were ordinary members of a small Pedi chieftaincy living in the hills east of Polokwane. They lived on land owned by German missionaries, and Engenas grew up as a Lutheran before a political disagreement erupted over a land dispute between the mission and the tribe.</p>
<p>In the late 1890s the young Engenas was educated by Xhosa Presbyterian missionaries brought in to replace the Lutherans. So Engenas had a very orthodox Protestant background and education.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254964/original/file-20190122-100288-1y4gv5z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254964/original/file-20190122-100288-1y4gv5z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1011&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254964/original/file-20190122-100288-1y4gv5z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1011&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254964/original/file-20190122-100288-1y4gv5z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1011&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254964/original/file-20190122-100288-1y4gv5z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1271&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254964/original/file-20190122-100288-1y4gv5z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1271&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254964/original/file-20190122-100288-1y4gv5z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1271&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Engenas Lekganyane, founder of the ZCC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied by author</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lekganyane’s education and life were completely disrupted following the outbreak of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/south-african-war-1899-1902">South African War</a> between the British and the Boers in 1899. He eventually became a migrant worker, leaving home to work in nearby Tzaneen and faraway Boksburg on municipal construction projects. </p>
<p>During these years he first joined Pentecostal or Zionist churches. But he was expelled from Tzaneen by the Protestant chief. Returning home in 1915 at the age of 30 he began his own church with 14 members. Within 10 years he had 926 followers and began the ZCC following a vision he had at the top of Mt Thabakgone, a now sacred hill adjacent to his village.</p>
<p>After a legal dispute involving the stillbirth of his illegitimate child, Lekganyane was expelled by his chief in 1930. He lived on private land thereafter, carefully maintaining his autonomy and privacy.</p>
<h2>Making of the ZCC</h2>
<p>Lekganyane was initially inspired by an Australian faith healer named <a href="https://www.academia.edu/6779053/The_Big_Con_John_Alexander_Dowie_and_the_Spread_of_Zionist_Christianity_in_Southern_Africa_Paper_Presented_at_the">John Alexander Dowie</a>. He took most of his theology from the then white-led <a href="http://afm-ags.org/">Apostolic Faith Mission</a> a Pentecostal group he belonged to from 1910 to 1916. </p>
<p>He incorporated many <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-syncretism-p2-95858">syncretic practices</a> taken from African tradition. The most important of these was to incorporate ancestral worship into his church, a practice that he adopted from an early Zionist named <a href="https://www.academia.edu/32181489/The_Rebellion_From_Below_and_the_Origins_of_Early_Zionist_Christianity">Daniel Nkonyane</a>.</p>
<p>ZCC members were expected to make cash offerings to their ancestors, which they gave to Lekganyane so that he could intercede on their behalf. He also reputedly protected his members against witchcraft, crime and disease. Over time, he usurped the roles of the chiefs as the claimed major rainmaker in the region.</p>
<p>By 1948, his church had grown to about 50 000 members. His legend within the ZCC community has grown substantially ever since. Even though he left no writing texts behind, the ZCC has made him the focus of its sacred narrative. The story of his religious calling, and also his various claimed miracles and prophesies, are well known by all members.</p>
<p>One of the reasons he managed to turn the ZCC into a religious juggernaut was his financial astuteness. He acquired property and carefully used donations for expansion. Additionally, he catered primarily to migrant workers, the largest growing segment of the African population.</p>
<p>Engenas Lekganyane (c. 1885-1948) died 71 years ago on his private farm east of Polokwane. </p>
<p>During his lifetime, Lekganyane was never mentioned in print. Nor did anyone write his obituary following his rapid burial. He lived, to the end, a secretive and enigmatic existence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109599/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Research Fellow, Department of History, UNISA</span></em></p>A new biography sheds light on Engenas Lekganyane, founder of the Zion Christian Church.Barry Morton, Research Fellow, African Studies, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1072492018-11-28T14:49:11Z2018-11-28T14:49:11ZWhy we need end-of-life rituals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247061/original/file-20181123-149311-92o1ay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/521517997?src=IWJc4pSk6ociS03-j0dr8g-1-0&size=medium_jpg">jorisvo/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When someone dies, it is common to mark their death with funeral rituals, but the idea of using a ritual to mark someone as they near the end of their life is less common. Yet rituals could provide succour to all involved at this difficult time. </p>
<p>Rituals help people to mark and make sense of the big life changes that we all go through, such as births, marriages and deaths. Rituals work when the people involved understand what is going on. For example, for a non-religious parent, it may make sense to have a <a href="https://humanism.org.uk/ceremonies/humanist-namings/">secular baby-naming ceremony</a>, rather than a religious christening or baptism to welcome their baby to the community.</p>
<p>Ritual is often thought of as actions that express shared meanings, such as lighting candles during a funeral ceremony. They could also be words or music, such as reading a poem or playing a favourite song. Rituals can help us deal with change, partly because of the shared understandings we have of the actions involved, but also because those ritual actions tend to be familiar to us. Using familiar words and actions in an unfamiliar situation can help us find our way through it. </p>
<p>We are used to thinking of funerals as being for the living. The funeral can be an opportunity for bereaved people to mourn, to share stories about the person who died and to come together with others who are grieving. Funeral ritual can help people to feel more in control <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-mummification-to-sky-burials-why-we-need-death-rituals-60386">when faced with a terrible loss</a>.</p>
<p>The period of time when someone is dying, however, is viewed differently. The focus is on the dying person and on making sure that they receive the care they need. But ensuring that the person who is coming to the end of their life receives the best care does not mean that those who love them need to ignore their own welfare. </p>
<p>Gathering family and friends around the bed of a dying person is called keeping vigil. It is a common practice in many parts of the world. Traditional Xhosa healers in South Africa, for example, describe death as a collective matter. It is important for the family to be at the bedside to ensure a good death. Family presence allows the dying person to be at peace and to let their relatives know what they want for the family’s future. This doesn’t just benefit the dying person, but also helps family members, offering <a href="https://www.jpsmjournal.com/article/S0885-3924(12)00461-7/fulltext">a chance to mend relationships</a>.</p>
<p>Being with the dying person, whether sitting quietly or chatting, gives people the chance to say goodbye. It is also an opportunity to share the experience with other family members or friends, in much the same way that <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2190/IL.21.2.c">mourning is shared at a funeral</a>. For some dying people and their families, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/10805673_Music_therapy_with_imminently_dying_hospice_patients_and_their_families_Facilitating_release_near_the_time_of_death">music is used as a shared experience</a> in the final hours.</p>
<h2>Memory box</h2>
<p>Memory boxes are another form of ritual that is becoming more common. Women in Uganda recently began the practice of creating a memory book or a memory box in order to share their life story and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027795360600236X">create a sense of belonging</a> for their children after they had died.</p>
<p>A memory box can also be assembled by the family or friends of the dying person and doesn’t have to be intended for children. Such a box <a href="https://www.havenshospices.org.uk/home/resources/how-to-make-a-memory-box">can hold</a> mementos, photos, written notes, a CD, copied poems; anything, in fact, that can act as a reminder of the person.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247062/original/file-20181123-149320-sjdoic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247062/original/file-20181123-149320-sjdoic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247062/original/file-20181123-149320-sjdoic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247062/original/file-20181123-149320-sjdoic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247062/original/file-20181123-149320-sjdoic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247062/original/file-20181123-149320-sjdoic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247062/original/file-20181123-149320-sjdoic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mementos of life’s journey.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/161933288?src=XHwkmnU9-Yr6SWy_yAvtPg-1-0&size=medium_jpg">RG-vc/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Thinking about and discussing how to manage the end of life may be useful for both the dying person and their family and friends. The unknown is difficult to deal with so understanding that they are taking part in a ritual of accompaniment and leave-taking can help a family make sense of and mark the change that they are going through.</p>
<p>Death is about the biggest change any person will encounter, whether it is their own death or that of someone close to them. Using rituals that express shared meanings to help them feel more in control at a time of loss can only be a good thing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107249/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Glenys Caswell receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust to carry out research into the social management of lone deaths. </span></em></p>Rituals, such as keeping vigil, can help people when a loved one is near the end of their life.Glenys Caswell, Senior Research Fellow, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/972772018-06-06T13:59:07Z2018-06-06T13:59:07ZBiography of an ancestral river: a call to arms against exploitation in South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221173/original/file-20180531-69511-eb3ovr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Kowie River follows a ‘horseshoe bend’ between Port Alfred and
Bathurst.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAI</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Respected South African academic and author <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jacklyn-cock-201078">Jacklyn Cock’s</a> deep love for the Kowie river is the key thread that runs throughout her new book, <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/writing-the-ancestral-river/">“Writing the Ancestral River”</a>. The 94 kilometre long river snakes through South Africa’s Eastern Cape province and flows into the Indian Ocean at the small town of Port Alfred.</p>
<p>Part of Cock’s love for the river derives from deep connections that have lasted a lifetime and stretch to her ancestry in the area. This love has always involved the physical sharing of the river with her friends, giving them glimpses into nature and history that can be both exhilarating and disquieting. </p>
<p>In essence her book involves a braver and more comprehensive sharing of her thoughts on the river with a wider public. Cock’s luminous literary style, her historical sensitivity, and her ecological expertise all serve to delight the reader. </p>
<h2>A history retold</h2>
<p>Her analysis ranges over two centuries marked by colonial dispossession and despoliation of the environment, with disparate events linked to the river providing a prism through which they can be understood and connected. Part of the story involves colonial military repression of the Xhosa in the Zuurveld, through which the Kowie is the main watercourse. </p>
<p>Part of it looks at the story of William Cock, the author’s great-great-grandfather. He was leading member of the 1820 settler community, sent by the British authorities to become a buffer between themselves and the Xhosa on the contested eastern colonial frontier. </p>
<p>A third focus is the building in 1989 of a private holiday marina on the fragile Kowie estuary. This construction has been ecologically destructive and has only served the interests of the venal rich in one of the country’s poorest localities. </p>
<p>The book’s timely publication may draw attention to how South Africans choose to commemorate the bicentennial of the Battle of Grahamstown (1819) and the arrival of the main body of settlers the following year.
Cock calls the battle “a turning point in South African history”. </p>
<p>The book raises important questions about the destructive impact of colonialism in relation to pre-existing culture and nature. It makes a new contribution to debates about how capitalism developed on the colonial frontier. It also focuses on how the ecology of the river has been disturbed, disrespected and sacrificed across time. </p>
<p>The conflict on the eastern Cape frontier was a classic land grab of the Zuurveld by British forces. It was an area known for its palatable grazing. Today we would call it ethnic cleansing. </p>
<p>Xhosa groups had been farmers there for over a century. A series of colonial military actions resulted in their expulsion, the destruction of their livelihoods – including crops and cattle – and their exclusion from the district. </p>
<p>The 1819 Battle was an attempt by the Xhosa under the leadership of Makhanda to recuperate previous losses. Cock movingly describes Makhanda’s bravery and subsequent incarceration on Robben Island, from which he died trying to escape. </p>
<h2>Taming the river</h2>
<p>Another strong character in the history of the Kowie was Cock’s Cornish forbear, William. He was a complex colonial politician and entrepreneur. William Cock was involved in coastal and inter-colonial trade. He saw opportunities in taming the Kowie for these ends, in order to create from its estuary a safe haven for his fleet of cargo boats. </p>
<p>Port Alfred reached its apogee in the 1870s, but sedimentation of the river mouth required constant dredging. Harbour development saw increasing use of convict labour, and ultimately failed because of political infighting and the introduction of steamships, too large to enter the narrow estuary. William Cock turned to other pursuits, like banking, and embodied what Jacklyn has bravely termed “settler capitalism”.</p>
<p>The book brings us up to date by considering the impacts of the construction of a marina in the estuary, largely a holiday playground of the owners of second homes. The author’s appraisal of this project shows how it came to fruition during the democratic transition, at a time of fragile and biddable local regulatory institutions, prior to any strengthening of the apparatus for environmental protection. </p>
<p>Her words have had to be chosen with caution, owing to the potentially litigious bent of the marina developers. Despite this, the project is fully and eloquently critiqued. She has exposed it as a massive assault on riverine ecology and an utter failure to deliver on the promises of prosperity in the region. </p>
<h2>Warning signals</h2>
<p>Jacklyn Cock has proved brave in marshalling the history of the Kowie to illustrate not just her deep personal connections to the terroir, but also to rehearse the warnings provided by destructive colonial and post-colonial attitudes to the natural environment. </p>
<p>Her fluid biography urges readers not remain silent. Instead we should be inspired by the shapes and sounds of the river so that we can better speak out for its, and, in the end, our common survival.</p>
<p><em>“Writing the Ancestral River” is published by Wits University Press.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97277/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Fig does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The analysis of the Kowie River rehearses the warnings provided by the colonial and post-colonial destruction of culture and nature.David Fig, Honorary Research Associate, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/964752018-05-16T13:16:56Z2018-05-16T13:16:56ZIt’s time to rethink what’s meant by “mother tongue” education<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219000/original/file-20180515-195341-jdo2tg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The issue of mother tongue education has been fiercely but sporadically debated in South Africa since 1994. In the past two and a half years, student protests at universities across the country have breathed new life into the discussions.</p>
<p>Proponents of mother tongue education tend to argue that children should be taught in the language they first learned and spoke at home. Those who oppose this approach argue that English is a ‘global language’ and should be the main language of instruction throughout the school system and into higher education spaces.</p>
<p>But in a country steeped in colonialism and apartheid, it’s not far-fetched to suspect that the common understanding of the idea of “mother tongues” is coloured by outside influences. </p>
<p>A mother tongue is taken to be a language that has a name: Xhosa, Tswana or Sotho, for instance. It refers to the standard version of that language, transcribed in most cases by 19th century European missionaries based on how they understood and conceptualised the way people spoke in the immediate vicinity of the rural mission station. </p>
<p>But what they were transcribing were actually regional dialects, not pure versions of pristine languages tied to an authentic and timeless cultural identity. Decades of schooling practices institutionalised and continuously reinforced the missionaries’ notions.</p>
<p>Here’s the problem: those supposedly “pure” languages often bear only a loose family resemblance to the way that modern people in both rural and urban areas actually speak. But, as my own previous and ongoing <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lara_Krause2">research</a> shows, it’s important to challenge the common assumption that “mother-tongue education” is necessarily helpful and empowering for African language speakers if it’s based on an unquestioned, popular idea of what a “mother tongue” is. </p>
<h2>Mismatches</h2>
<p>I’m currently lecturing Xhosa grammar at the University of Cape Town, mostly to second language speakers but also to some who speak it as a home language. Xhosa is the country’s second biggest indigenous African language.</p>
<p>In class I am often confronted with mismatches between what the grammar books say and how people express themselves in speech. So I often ask my Xhosa speaking students about their preferred way of saying something in their “mother tongue”. The students frequently start their response with an apology like: “Well, I can say it – but I know that’s not the proper Xhosa.” </p>
<p>This embarrassment seems to partly come from a perceived mismatch between identifying as a Xhosa person but feeling as if not fully commanding one’s own “mother tongue”. This is reflected in other statements such as: “Even we Xhosas don’t know how to speak Xhosa properly”, variations of which I frequently hear from students and also from my Xhosa speaking friends. </p>
<p>Their statements echo findings I made while <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lara_Krause2">researching</a> first my Master’s and then my PhD. My work focused on language related issues at a primary school in Khayelitsha, which is the biggest of the poverty-stricken, largely informal settlements at the outskirts of Cape Town. Residents there mainly speak Xhosa.</p>
<p>At the school three years of “mother-tongue education” precede the switch to English as medium of instruction in grade 4, when most children are around 9 or 10 years old.</p>
<p>A grade 3 teacher told me that she had to teach her pupils Xhosa numbers before she can teach them maths. These are children whose “mother tongue” is Xhosa. She said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They know these words in English sometimes. If you say <em>inye</em> (Xhosa for 1), they can say <em>one</em>, because that is the language at home. They don’t say <em>inye</em> at home, they say <em>one</em>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She also often had to teach children to say, for example, imifuno (<em>vegetables - standard Xhosa</em>) instead of ‘iveg’, which is adapted from the English word “vegetable” and is widely used in contemporary Xhosa. </p>
<p>Such examples show that childrens’ actual mother tongues are often translingual. That is, they’re made up of linguistic resources that, according to dominant Western conventions, would be said to belong to different languages. </p>
<p>So does this mean there’s something wrong with these children’s mother tongue? No, I don’t think so. Perhaps, instead, there are some problems with our own notions of “mother tongue”.</p>
<h2>Mother tongue or missionary tongue?</h2>
<p>The frame of reference for European missionaries and colonisers when transcribing African language practices was an idea of <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/spilplus/v51/02.pdf">languages existing as autonomous structures</a>, each spoken by a distinct group of people.</p>
<p>Versatile and flexible African listeners and speakers communicating efficiently without necessarily agreeing on one distinct, correct way of speaking did not fit this 19th century European frame of reference. </p>
<p>But to translate Bibles and develop grammars for their “educational” and Christian agenda, missionaries had to make African ways of speaking fit European ideas of language and grammaticality. Their Western concept of language forced them to be selective, to choose some ways of speaking for standardisation and writing purposes and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/250226286">to ignore others</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pT8RqNcQmyk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Anthropologist Joseph Errington discusses colonial language practices.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The result is that most of today’s “African languages” and so-called mother tongues are not defined by the way African mothers speak but by how white Europeans wrote them into being decades ago.</p>
<p>The good news is that some shifts are happening in how African languages are discussed and understood.</p>
<h2>Moving forward</h2>
<p>Ideas like translanguaging are increasingly helping scholars to rethink their assumptions about language. Slowly, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-continents-languages-can-unlock-the-potential-of-young-africans-90322">the potential</a> of such concepts for South African education is starting to enter debates outside academia. Translingual approaches to teaching and learning are even <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1947-94172017000200008">being tested</a> in some spaces.</p>
<p>Mother tongues must be re-thought and become rooted in actual language use. This process will make South Africans question established ideas of what “a language” is or what it has to be. That’s a good thing: such progressive thinking is needed to better understand “mother tongues”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96475/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lara-Stephanie Krause does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s not far-fetched to suspect that the common understanding of the idea of “mother tongues” in South Africa is coloured by outside influences.Lara-Stephanie Krause, PhD Student School of Languages and Literatures, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/943002018-04-03T13:03:05Z2018-04-03T13:03:05ZWinnie Madikizela-Mandela: revolutionary who kept the spirit of resistance alive<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212924/original/file-20180403-189807-1gv4h4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African liberation struggle icon Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has died at the age of 81.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Jon Hrusha</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>No other woman – in life and after – occupies the place that <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/winnie-madikizela-mandela">Winnie Madikizela-Mandela</a> does in South African politics. A stalwart of the African National Congress (ANC), she nevertheless stands above, and at times outside, the party. Her iconic status transcends political parties and geographical boundaries, generations and genders. Poets have <a href="http://alicewalkersgarden.com/2016/09/winnie-mandela-we-love-you/">honoured her</a>, writers have <a href="http://panmacmillan.co.za/catalogue/the-cry-of-winnie-mandela/">immortalised her</a> and photographers have <a href="https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/winnie-mandela?sort=mostpopular&mediatype=photography&phrase=winnie%20mandela&family=editorial">adored her</a>. </p>
<p>Her life has been overburdened by tragedies and dramas, and by the expectations of a world hungry for godlike heroes on whom to pin all its dreams, and one-dimensional villains on whom to pour its rage. Yet perhaps it is in the smaller and more intimate stories of our stumbling to make a better world that we are best able to recognise and appreciate the meaning of the life of Madikizela-Mandela. </p>
<p>In her particular life, we may see more clearly the violence wrought by colonialism and apartheid, the profound consequences of fraternal political movements to whom women were primarily ornamental and, yes, the tragic mistakes made in the crucible of civil war. </p>
<p>Her political power stemmed from the visceral connection that she was able to make between the everyday lives of black people in a racist state, and her own individual life. State power, in all its vicious dimensions, was exaggerated in its response to her indomitable will – and in its stark visibility, personified. </p>
<p>Fearless in the face of torture, imprisonment, banishment and betrayal, she stood firm in her conviction that apartheid could be brought down. She said what she liked, and bore the consequences. Her very life was a form of bearing witness to the brutality of the system. </p>
<h2>A life of misrecognition</h2>
<p>Many obituaries will outline the broad sweep of her life; few will mark the extent to which her revolutionary ideas were shaped before she even met Nelson Mandela. To most of her social circle in the 1950s, for a long time into the 1980s, and certainly for Nelson Mandela’s biographers, Madikizela-Mandela was a young rural naif who charmed the most eligible (married) man in town.</p>
<p>This way of seeing her as primarily beautiful, and not as an emerging political figure, has coloured both contemporaneous accounts of Madikizela-Mandela (for she was surely too young and beautiful to have a serious political idea) as well as scholarly accounts of the period (which focused on the thoughts and actions of men). </p>
<p>This misrecognition resonated in the ANC, which had no way of accommodating Madikizela-Mandela’s political qualities other than by casting her in the familiar tropes of wife and mother. Astutely, she embraced the role of mother and wife of a political leader and fashioned it into a platform for her own variant of radicalism, drawing on recent memories of the forcible dispossession of land and its impact on the Eastern Cape peasantry, and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/definition-black-consciousness-bantu-stephen-biko-december-1971-south-africa">black consciousness</a>. </p>
<p>She kept those traditions alive in the ANC, especially in the everyday politics of the townships, when the leadership of the party was crafting new forms of non-racialism and at times vilifying black consciousness. Even though she was not part of the inner circle of the black consciousness movement, being older than the students leading it at its height, she was an ally in words and spirit. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212927/original/file-20180403-189801-16jx8st.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212927/original/file-20180403-189801-16jx8st.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=854&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212927/original/file-20180403-189801-16jx8st.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=854&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212927/original/file-20180403-189801-16jx8st.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=854&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212927/original/file-20180403-189801-16jx8st.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212927/original/file-20180403-189801-16jx8st.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212927/original/file-20180403-189801-16jx8st.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Madikizela-Mandela in a T-shirt bearing the image of Chris Hani.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Kim Ludbrook</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the tumult after the <a href="http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/sidebar.php?id=65-258-3">1976 uprising</a>, she built a bridge between different political factions. In the early 1990s, when Nelson Mandela was urging armed youths to give up violent strategies, it was Madikizela-Mandela they called on (along with the then leader of the South African Communist Party <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thembisile-chris-hani">Chris Hani</a>) to defend their change in tactics. </p>
<p>She played a similar role in brokering between moderates and radicals in the ANC and its breakaways up until her death. This was a form of gendered politics made possible by her status as mother of the nation, uniting warring sons and holding together her political family, even if peace was maintained only in her presence. </p>
<h2>White power and black suffering</h2>
<p>Winnie Madikizela was born in a rural Eastern Cape village called Bizana in September 1936. Her parents, Columbus and Gertrude, were teachers and her childhood was marked by the stern Methodism of her mother and the radical Africanist orientation of her father. </p>
<p>Rural life, with its entrenched gender roles, shaped her childhood. Not only was she aware of her mother’s desire to bear another son, but she and her sisters were expected to care for their male siblings. She was barely eight when her mother died months after giving birth to Winnie’s brother. Her childhood was cut short, and she had to leave school for six months to work in the fields and to carry out, with her sisters, all the daily chores of the household, from preparing food to cleaning. In her large and rambunctious family in which her parents upheld discipline with physical punishment, she learned to defend herself with her fists, if necessary.</p>
<p>Her rural background made her aware of land dispossession as a central question of freedom. By her own account, she learnt about the racialised system of power early in her life. From her father, she learnt about the Xhosa wars against the colonisers, and later would imagine herself as picking up where her ancestors <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Part-My-Soul-Went-Him/dp/0393302903">had failed</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If they failed in those nine Xhosa wars, I am one of them of them and I will start from where those Xhosas left off and get my land back.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She was to retain the theme of land dispossession by colonialism throughout her political career. Associated with this was the idea that race was central to colonialism. Taught by her grandmother that the source of black suffering was white power, her framing of politics was defined completely by the ways in which her family understood the relations of colonialism, and by their personal experiences of humiliation. </p>
<p>As with many other ANC members with Eastern Cape roots, she did not think of urban struggles as the only space of resistance, or workers as the only agents of change. She <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=HD7U2a1Sp-0C&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=The+white+makes+a+mistake,+thinking+the+tribal+black+is+subservient+and+docile.&source=bl&ots=1YSWJjmA1F&sig=I1HuHC3iaevTwHkDcAgd1P6rMfI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjW4JyJ2p3aAhVmC8AKHSnXBlIQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=The%20white%20makes%20a%20mistake%2C%20thinking%20the%20tribal%20black%20is%20subservient%20and%20docile.&f=false">warned</a>, in 1985, that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The white makes a mistake, thinking the tribal black is subservient and docile. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Militant to the core</h2>
<p>After six short years together, Madikizela-Mandela’s husband, Nelson, was sentenced to <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/news/entry/nelson-mandela-sentenced-to-life-imprisonment-44-years-ago">life imprisonment</a>. By this stage, she too was inextricably involved in the national liberation movement, politics with single parenting. She was attuned to the mood of people, and was more of an empathic leader than a theorist or tactician. </p>
<p>She was an effective speaker, and had a gift for winning over an audience. Adelaide Joseph, a friend and fellow ANC activist, <a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Part-of-My-Soul-Went-with-Him/">recalls</a> that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>when she made her first public speech…right on the spot, while she was speaking, the women composed a song for Winnie Mandela. And they started to sing right in the hall.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She joined the ANC Women’s League and the <a href="http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/?inventory/U/collections&c=AD1137/R/">Federation of South African Women</a>, and participated in several campaigns. She was militant to the core. On one occasion, when a policeman arrived at her house with a summons and dared to pull her arm, she assaulted him and had to defend herself in court for the action.</p>
<p>She was far from being a bystander, or a passive wife patiently waiting for her husband’s release from prison. In her autobiography, Madikizela-Mandela credits several other women for influencing her politically. Among these were Lilian Ngoyi, Florence Matomela, Frances Baard and Kate Molale, all leaders of the Federation. </p>
<p>For her, they were the “top of the ANC hierarchy” although at the time no women were in fact in any formal leadership positions in the ANC. The ANC only <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/women-and-african-national-congress-1912-1943">allowed women to become full members in 1943</a>, and during the 1950s, women were locked in an intense battle for recognition within the movement. </p>
<p>In the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/anc-womens-league-ancwl">ANC Women’s League</a> and in the Federation, she held positions as chairperson of her branch in Orlando, and was a member of their provincial and national executives. In the 1970s, with her close friend Fatima Meer, she formed the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/black-womens-federation">Black Women’s Federation</a>. It was a short lived organisation with few campaigns, but signalled an adherence to the new township based politics that was sweeping the country. </p>
<p>Her mode of work in any case was not that of painstaking organisation-building; she was more capable as a public speaker and as someone who could connect with people in the harsh conditions of life in apartheid’s townships. She attended funerals and counselled families, acts of public courage that sustained activists. She offered a form of intimate political leadership, instinctively aligning herself with people in distress. </p>
<p>Gender was her political resource, enabling her to draw on effective qualities to form political communities and providing a mode in which she could enter into the lives of people in the townships. She embraced the role of mother and wife of a political leader and fashioned it into a platform from which she challenged the apartheid state. </p>
<h2>Banishment and brutality</h2>
<p>If the apartheid state had hoped to break her, they failed. She was fearless in the face of the state’s attempts to silence her. Her home was repeatedly invaded and searched, and she was arrested, assaulted and imprisoned several times. Then, in 1977, in an act of extreme cruelty, she was served with a banishment order to a place in the Free State called Brandfort – a place she had never heard of nor had she ever visited. </p>
<p>It was a horrendous uprooting from her family and community in Soweto, a form of exile that she described as “my little Siberia.” Madikizela-Mandela grasped very clearly the power that could derive from associating actions against her with actions against the nation. As <a href="http://www.storiadelledonne.it/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Hassim2014.pdf">she put it</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When they send me into exile, it’s not me as an individual they are sending. They think that with me they can also ban the political ideas. But that is a historic impossibility… I am of no importance to them as an individual. What I stand for is what they want to banish. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But although the state did not break Winnie, by her own account it did brutalise her. Talking about her long period of solitary confinement and torture in 1969, she told a journalist that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>that imprisonment of eighteen months in solitary confinement did actually change me … We were so brutalised by that experience that I then believed in the language of violence and the only to deal with, to fight, apartheid was through the same violence they were unleashing against us and that is how one gets affected by that type of brutality. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The consequences were awful, not just for her but also for <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/graduations/2014---2012/biography-paul-verryn.html">Paul Verryn</a>, and especially for the families of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/stompie-seipeis-murderer-goes-jail">Stompie Seipei</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dr-abu-baker-asvat">Abu Asvat</a>. This period in her life, and in South African politics generally, is one that will not only occupy our moral energies, but also shape the ways in which narratives of violence in the 1980s are written. These were dark times in a country weighed down by states of emergency and militarised control. The exaggerated quality of Madikizela-Mandela’s life had to bear, too, the nightmares of our nation’s struggles to free itself. </p>
<p>The ANC could barely contain the nature of leadership that Winnie represented. Like many women in the movement, she was marginalised from its powerful decision making structures. Unlike male leaders, her personal life was constantly under the spotlight (no doubt aided by a zealous security machinery that kept her under constant surveillance), and she was judged harshly and unfairly for her private choices. Although she was a masterful player of the familial categories of wife and mother, she felt reduced by them too.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212929/original/file-20180403-189827-13ajmv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212929/original/file-20180403-189827-13ajmv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212929/original/file-20180403-189827-13ajmv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212929/original/file-20180403-189827-13ajmv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212929/original/file-20180403-189827-13ajmv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212929/original/file-20180403-189827-13ajmv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212929/original/file-20180403-189827-13ajmv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Winnie with Nelson Mandela after his release from prison in 1990.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Stringer</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Commentators like to use words such as maverick and wayward to describe her, but these tendencies developed because the regular structures of the ANC could not easily accommodate a powerful woman with a radical voice. Stepping outside the agreed parameters of the official party line, as she frequently did, was a form of asserting her independence, a form of refusal of the terms of political cadreship that were available to women in the ANC and in society more generally. It also allowed her to build alliances with the new voices emerging after 1994, from standing with the <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2002/16.html">Treatment Action Campaign</a> against Thabo Mbeki’s policies on HIV/AIDS, to supporting the formation of the Economic Freedom Fighters. It accounts for the tremendous affection for her among young activists who are equally wary of the sedimented power structures in politics.</p>
<p>The endless stream of photographs that picture her in romantic embrace with Nelson Mandela, even now in her death, and despite their divorce, miss this fundamental point: the marriage was only a small part of her life, not its definitive point. To present her simply as wife, mostly as mother, is to erase the many struggles she waged to be defined in her own terms.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94300/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shireen Hassim receives funding from the AW Mellon Foundation for a project entitled Governing Intimacies. </span></em></p>Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s political power stemmed from the visceral connection that she was able to make between the lives of the oppressed black people, and her own.Shireen Hassim, Professor of Political Studies, WiSER, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.