The character and objects of Chaka: a re-consideration of the making of Shaka as Mfecane "motor"
Date
1991-06
Authors
Hamilton, Caroline
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
In a series of papers and articles beginning in 1983, Julian Cobbing has offered a radical, and often provocative, critique of the "mfecane" as the pivotal concept of the history of southern Africa in the first half of the nineteenth century. (1) He asks vigorous new questions about everything from the identity of the "Fingoes" in the south and the "Mantatee hordes" on the highveld, to the extent of the slave trade around Delagoa Bay. Cobbing's work has stimulated a
host of graduate studies on these topics, and has prompted a number of established students of the period to reassess aspects of their earlier work.(2) The sheer scope of the critique is, however, also the source of its greatest weakness. In particular, Cobbing has come under fire for making sweeping generalisations and employing imprecise periodisation. Nowhere is this criticism more pertinent than in relation to the lynchpin of Cobbing's thesis, namely, his view of Shaka-the-monster as a European invention to mask illegal labour procurement activities and land occupation. In this paper, I focus on Cobbing's reconstruction of the making of the Shaka myth. My purpose is to disentangle the elaborate weave of Cobbing's powerful insights and
implausible conspiracy theories. I suggest that while Cobbing's critique is extremely valuable, especially in the way that it forces historians to question many of the assumptions with which they have for too long been extremely comfortable, he falls fundamentally to come to grips with the full complexity of his primary object of study, past historical myth-making processes.
Description
African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented June, 1991
Keywords
Shaka, Zulu Chief, 1787?-1828, Slavery. South Africa