The colonial, the imperial, and the creation of the 'European' in southern Africa

Abstract

This paper examines the Zulu attempt to understand and to exploit the imperial power of Queen Victoria relative to the colonial powers of Natal's earliest colonists, missionaries, and administrators. The study reveals the opening up, and exploitation of a distinction between the interests of the " imperial", represented for the Zulu royalty by Queen Victoria in England. and the "colonial" (or "Colonialist" -a term invented in mid nineteenth century southern Africa) represented by the Shepstone administration in Natal and the Cape Parliament in the Cape Colony. An attempt is made to sketch the 19th century Zulu imagination of power in which the colonial, the imperial, the missionary, the Zulu and the European or " Western" (Occidental) types and sources of power could be comprehended and manipulated. It amounted to the creation of the social category of "The White" by southern African people who were simultaneously cast as "The Black" or "The Natives" by people of European descent in southern Africa. It also led to the creation of the characteristically South African politics which seeks a moral arbitor and guarantee not in its own limited arena, but in the world at large.