Goodnight Azania

Formal history, in talking about South Africa before the 19th century, relies heavily on archaeological forms of evidence to construct its narratives. While this may be justified by the paucity of testimony from autochthonous Africans that points a resolute finger into past epistemic, ontological, cosmologic, political-ethical philosophical positions, it remains inadequate in capturing a more synthesised conception of southern African life. The 17th- and 18th-century Dutch colony has been characterised by Hamilton et al. as being minimally interested in the extent to which the colony could have been imposed on much longer historiography. Such positions could be defended by the narratives set into motion to justify the dispossession of indigenous African people. However, parallel to this fact lies the fact of the presence of literary productions by Europeans travelling into South Africa and writing about their visits. This episode, then, will be an attempt to review these materials and their producers, to gauge their influences on South African literature, over time. To help us unpack 18th travel writing on South Africa I am joined by Ian Glenn. Ian is an Emeritus Professor of Media Studies at the University of Cape Town. He studied at the University of Natal (Durban) where he did a BA in English and Politics and then an Honours in English, at the University of York in the UK where he did a B.Phil and then at the University of Pennsylvania for an MA and PhD. His particular research interests are media in the new South Africa, political communication, audience studies, media technologies and the literature of exploration, and environmental media. To follow Goodnight Azania on social media, click below: Twitter Facebook Instagram

The history of South African literature is so multidimensional that sometimes to speak of a South African literature feels like a contradiction of sorts. This is also not surprising, given the full extent of violence, segregation, greed and white supremacy that lies at the instance of confrontation between the hunter-gatherers, pastoralists and the agro-pastoralist communities of this landscape and invading Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries of South African history. We have, however, been fortunate enough to have different scholars on the different literary traditions come expand on the conceptual frameworks of each and, where possible, how these traditions have evolved to the present and perhaps they are expected to continue to mutate in the coming future. Today’s episode is in keeping with that trajectory begun a couple of episodes ago with the discussion of Khoekhoe and San oral and visual literary cultures, through to the northern languages of present-day Limpopo and Mpumalanga. In this episode, however, we are interested in tracing the knowledge systems of Europeans in relation to southern Africa, from the entire tradition of European literacy and speculation. What are the conceptions of this part of the world in ancient Greece? How do these conceptions continue on into medieval times and how do they inform the assumptions carried by Europeans on their voyages of so-called discovery around the world and in South Africa? How do these make themselves felt in the literature of South Africa? To help us unpack all these questions we are joined by Jeffrey Murray. Before joining the University of Cape Town, Jeffrey was Lecturer in Classics in the School of Religion, Philosophy, and Classics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He is currently writing a commentary on Book 9 of Valerius Maximus’ Facta et dicta memorabilia, the only book of the work to have an unremitting focus on negative values. Apart from historical and literary commentary on the text of this first century AD writer, this work will also include exegetical essays on the various vices covered in Book 9, such as luxury, lust, cruelty, anger etc., contextualising them in Roman moral tradition and ancient ethical thought and literature in general. Jeffrey is also editing a volume on Valerius Maximus with a colleague of his, David Wardle, arising from a conference hosted at the University of Cape Town in October 2017. His other main research interest is in the History of Classical Scholarship and the cognate field of Classical Reception Studies, particularly as they concern the colonial and postcolonial periods of southern African history.

The past episodes of formal history have proven to us that the approach of social history is sometimes unable to go beyond its broad categories, to reach down to what I can call the human heart. I suppose this could be partly because there would be so many human hearts to consider such that the task would simply become impossible because people die with their thoughts and words, that is the nature of life. Every generation of humanity however has their fair share of artists, however, people who dare to raise a giant mirror to the society in which they find themselves, to depict it for what it is, not how it wishes to see itself. We have looked, in the past few weeks, at the artistic practices who identified themselves as Khoekhoe and San. While the picture that emerged was certainly fragmentary at best, they allowed renewed and refreshed accessed to a period that we have explored before with formal historians. The discerning listener would have noted that in this exploration we were guided by the route followed by the book in the development of 19th century South African life. From the Cape of Good Hope, towards the Eastern boundaries of the frontier. Today’s episode will be continuation of that journey, in that case. We will look at iimbongi of isiXhosa-speaking communities in 19th century South Africa and how these evolved over time. To help us unpack all these questions we are joined by Russell Kaschula. Russell is a Professor of Languages at the University of the Western Cape. His research is multidisciplinary in the sense that it covers both linguistic and literary issues. He is particularly interested in matters pertaining to Applied Language Studies, Sociolinguistics, Education, Second Language Acquisition and Multilingualism. He also has a special interest in Intercultural Studies as well as literature. Most of his literary research is located within oral and written isiXhosa literary studies as well as Applied Language Studies. However, He is also a creative writer and has written novels and short stories in both isiXhosa and in English. He supervises many students, and his supervisory role has covered topics in Applied Language Studies, Literature as well as pure linguistics. The main emphasis has however been Applied Language Studies involving language in the workplace issues, language policy and implementation issues as well as language in education. He has also supervised a number of literary postgraduate research topics. Russell has taught at tertiary level since 1988 when he was appointed as a Junior Lecturer. Since then, he has taught at five South African universities and at an institution in the United States of America. He has teaching experience at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Russell has also held leadership positions at a number of institutions, including the University of Cape Town and Rhodes University. He was previously Head of the School of Languages, administering six different language sections with a total of thirty full-time lecturers and eight hundred and fifty students. He has held the seconded position of NRF SARChI Chair: Intellectualisation of African Languages, Multilingualism and Education.

The past episodes of formal history have proven to us that the approach of social history is sometimes not able to go beyond its broad categories, to reach down to what I can call the human heart. I suppose this could be partly because there would be so many human hearts to consider such that the task would simply become impossible because people die with their thoughts and words, that is the nature of life. Every generation of humanity however has their fair share of artists, however, people who dare to raise a giant mirror to the society in which they find themselves, to depict it for what it is, not how it wishes to see itself. We have looked, in the past few weeks, at the artistic practices who identified themselves as Khoekhoe and San, amaXhosa and baSotho. While the picture that emerged was certainly fragmentary at best, they allowed renewed and refreshed accessed to a period that we have explored before with formal historians. The discerning listener would have noted that in this exploration we were guided by the route followed by the book in the development of 19th century South African life. From the Cape of Good Hope, towards the Eastern boundaries of the frontier. Today’s episode will be continuation of that journey, in that case. We will look at the izibongo of isiZulu-speaking communities in 19th century South Africa and how these evolved over time. To help us unpack all these questions we are joined by Mbongiseni Buthelezi. Mbongiseni is the Executive Director at the Public Affairs Research Institute. He holds a PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, New York, where he also obtained a Master of Philosophy in English and Comparative Literature. A dedicated scholar, he graduated cum laude from both the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the University of Natal, earning a Master of Arts in English Studies and an Honours degree in English and Drama, respectively. Working in various academic and activist capacities, Mbongiseni has been interested in how the state interfaces with citizens in areas that include land restitution, the role of traditional leaders in governance, heritage and public archives. With various collaborators he has researched and written on the state’s constructions of the identities of citizens in KwaZulu-Natal through heritage discourse and commemorative events. He has also written on land and citizenship rights in rural areas and the role of traditional leaders in the realisation of these rights, as well as the dire state of public archives and its implications for accountable government.

Over the last nine episodes we have been joined by a variation of disciplinary experts who have taken us through a length of time through which it would be impossible for us to travel if we were to try to repeat exercise physically. We now know that there is more deep time than we have been able to explore about the people who have come before us, in their entirety. But perhaps the point of our exercise was, from the point of view of this podcast, to suggest to the non-specialist listener that there is more to South African history than what meets the eye, that there remains buried a lot of details about our which we alongside professional are at pains to recover. Today we want to do something unique in that I would like for us to go back to the path we have walked and ask ourselves this simple question: given that all these big political movements were occurring, how did these events present themselves to anonymous individuals and how they understood their place in world. Of course to do this we would require the confessions of all the individuals involved, something that we now know is not always possible with histories of the world, especially South African history. The key questions, then, I suppose would have to be modified to fit this piece of knowledge: for the periods in the record where historical knowledge of the social situation deepens, how did anonymous individuals see themselves and what they were about, and, how did these ways of seeing themselves change as the century wen along; what led to these transformations? To help us unpack all these questions we are joined by Paul Landau. Paul is a full professor in history at the University of Maryland in the United States, and a Fellow of the History Centre of the University of Johannesburg and is now a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Leipzig. He is an historian known for writing about Africa by paying close attention to what African people in the past thought and felt. He studied Zulu and Setswana with Daniel Kunene and other teachers, and his first two books (the only ones he has published) were, The Realm of the Word: Language, Gender, and Christianity in a Southern African Kingdom (1995), about Khama III's kingdom in today's Botswana, and Popular Politics in the History of South Africa, 1400 to 1948 (2010), which were both short-listed for the Herskovits Prize for best work in African Studies for the years they were published. He contributed the final chapter to the Cambridge History of South Africa, Vol. 1, "Transformations in Consciousness." He has published several peer-reviewed articles on 19th century history, medical missionaries, language and translation, African appropriations of Christianity, and African political traditions in South Africa. He has co-edited a book on pictures and images as interfaces in colonial contact, Images and Empires (2002). In the last decade, he has focused on 20th century history, and written about the African National Congress and the move toward violent insurgency in revolution; he is a contributor to the forthcoming work, Reconsidering Mandela, edited by Colin Bundy and William Beinart. His forthcoming book, under contract with Jacana Press and the University of Ohio's New African History series is called Mandela and the Revolutionaries: Spear (2021), a history of three critical years in South Africa, 1960-63.

Last week we were joined by Robert Ross who to a large extent helped us understand with more sincerity what the annexation of the Cape colony by the British meant for people living in what would later be called South Africa. The content of that episode was extensive, and thus cannot be repeated whole in this introduction. Where Robert left off was in the 1850s with the struggle in settler society for representative government. On today’s episode we are interested in picking up where Robert left off and continue the discussion,to span the rest of the period that is today broadly referred to as a preindustrial South Africa. By “industrial” what is meant is mass production and the use of sophisticated machinery in that process of production. If I could bring the word home for people who understand isiZulu: I remember that sometimes when adults would go out to look for work, or, were employed in a big city abantu used to say that uya efemini, noma usebenza efemini. On today’s episode, then, will focus on the rest of the preindustrial period. What is key though is that there will be no part of South Africa that will be mentioned for the first time in today’s discussion. On episode nine, John Wright went at length to help us uncover the social, political and economic relations in the interion and the north eastern parts, and, before that, Alex also did much work to help us understand the archaeological understandings of continuity and change in second millennium farming societies throughout the first six tenths of the last millennium. To help us unpack all these questions we are joined by Norman Etherington. Norman is Emeritus Professor at the University of Western Australia. Since moving to Australia in 1968 he has published widely on European Imperialism, African History, History of the British Empire, History of Christian Missions, Southern Africa and the History of Cartography. He has held visiting posts at Columbia University, the School of Oriental and African Studies, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Rhodes University, and the University of Cape Town. Norman is also a Research Associate at the University of South Africa. Outside the academy he has been recognised for his service to the National Trust and the Heritage Council of Western Australia. From 2012 to 2017 he was President of the National Trust of South Australia and is a past President of the Australian Historical Association. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, the Royal Historical Society in the UK, and the Royal Geographical Society also in the UK. In 2013 he was made a member of the Order of Australia for services to history and the community.

The colonial past of South Africa, heralded most pointedly, by the set-up of mercantile commerce and its attendant support-services in present day Cape Town, is said to be the first leg in the double colonisation of this part of the continent. In the ninth episode of Goodnight Azania I explore the second leg of this history of colonisation and its role in the protected spread of colonial society along what is today popularly referred to as The Garden Route in the Eastern Cape and into the heart of the country, past the Orange River. In the effort of exploring this topic I am rejoined by the notable Professor Robert Ross of Leiden University. Robert Ross was born in London. He studied in Cambridge, obtaining a Ph.D. in 1974 on the history of the Griquas in central South Africa. Since 1976 he has lived and worked in Leiden, as coordinator and (later) professor in African history. His teaching has been in the BA degree course Languages and Cultures of Africa, and the MAs (including the Research MA) on African Studies. In addition to his specialised research, he has written general works on South African history, and was involved as senior editor in the Cambridge History of South Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2010 and 2012)

On this episode I sit down with John Wright, a historian at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. We discuss the origin of the term difaqane/mfecane and what it has meant within the context of South African history over the centuries. We also use this as an opportunity to understand the nature of South African life in the interior to the north easterly coastal boundaries over the course covered by this period.

The seventeenth century heralds many transformations within many different societies across the globe. The famed establishment of a Dutch India Company outpost on Table Bay, Cape Town is one case in point in the overall tapestry. To review this period, prod it at the interpersonal, social, political levels I am joined by Robert Ross, a historian at the University of Leiden.

On this episode Mzamo is joined by Wits archaeologist Alex Schoeman to discuss the nature of the changes (and continuities) that occurred to first-millennium farming societies in South Africa as it gave way to the second and, afterwards. Potential insights into the genealogical histories of contemporary South African people are also explored.

In this episode Mzamo is joined by KwaZulu-Natal Museum's Chief Curator, Gavin Whitelaw, to speak about the earliest appearances of food production in South Africa.

By way of zooming in, Mzamo is joined by archaeology professor John Parkington to briefly speak about early life on Earth, with a particular focus on South Africa. Take Note: Because of bad weather, the presentation is at times muffled, obscuring some connections.

Mzamo Simone is joined by historian and interdisciplinary archival expert, Sanele kaNtshingana, of the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative at UCT, to discuss independent South Africa in relation to the overall historical archive.

Mzamo Simone is joined by Wits-affiliated Geologist Silindokuhle Mavuso to discuss the physical history of South Africa.

Welcome to Goodnight Azania! Meet the host Mzamo Simone and find out more what we have in store for you.