Journal ArticleDOI
‘colonial’ experts, local interlocutors, informants and the making of an archive on the ‘transvaal ndebele’, 1930–1989*
TLDR
This article explored the process of producing knowledge on the ''Transvaal Ndebele'', and provided an analysis of Van Warmelo's texts and of his researchers' manuscripts.Abstract:
The perspectives of African informants and researchers profoundly shaped the writings of government ethnologist Dr. Nicholas Jacobus van Warmelo who not only collected information from local African informants but also relied on African researchers who wrote manuscripts in the vernacular that would constitute part of his archive. This study explores the process of producing knowledge on the ''Transvaal Ndebele', and provides an analysis of Van Warmelo's texts and of his researchers' manuscripts. By looking at the role of local interlocutors, I make a case for African agency in shaping the ' colonial' expert's conceptions of Ndebele identity. This article provides an account of the co-production of cultural knowledge. Van Warmelo was employed by the South African Native Affairs Department to identify and fix 'tribes', a highly political enterprise, and in the process generated an archive. His work was as much appropriated by the apartheid state for social engineering as by Ndebele interlocutors involved in contemporary struggles over chieftainship.read more
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Book ChapterDOI
Introduction: Engaging Colonial Knowledge
Ricardo Roque,Kim A. Wagner +1 more
TL;DR: In the long history of European overseas expansion, an immense and diverse collection of texts, images, drawings, and maps has been produced and accumulated, part of which survives today in archives and libraries around the world.
Journal ArticleDOI
Hawks and baby chickens: cultivating the sources of indigenous science education
TL;DR: This article explored the multiple meanings of indigenous knowledge in Africa, next considered the sources available for accurately apprehending those different varieties of IK and then raised three issues of procedure that the Hewson and Ogunniyi approach seems largely to overlook: the varying meanings and styles of argumentation in African culture; the relevance of more participatory and discovery-based modes of inquiry to their topic; and the critical importance of grasping the socio-political terrain on which IK must operate.
Journal ArticleDOI
From Homeboy Networks to Broader Ethnic Affiliations: Migrants from Zebediela and Shifting Identities on the Rand, 1930s–1970s
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show how Rand-based migrants from Zebediela promoted a sense of group identity from the bottom up by clustering around people from their home areas and establishing organisations that looked after their interests.
Journal ArticleDOI
The long southern African past: enfolded time and the challenges of archive
TL;DR: The long southern African past before the advent of European colonialism remains neglected despite powerful post-apartheid impulses of various kinds for its recovery and celebration as mentioned in this paper. But the long Southern African past still remains neglected.
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Journal ArticleDOI
Neo-traditionalism and the limits of invention in british colonial africa
TL;DR: The authors argued that the case for colonial invention has often overstated colonial power and ability to manipulate African institutions to establish hegemony, and that tradition was a complex discourse in which people continually reinterpreted the lessons of the past in the context of the present.
Journal ArticleDOI
Early social anthropology in South Africa
TL;DR: Early social anthropology in South Africa: as mentioned in this paper discusses the role of early social anthropologists in early social anthropology and discusses their work in the early 1990s. African Studies: Vol. 49, No. 1, pp. 15-48.
Journal ArticleDOI
Chiefship in a South African homeland
TL;DR: In this paper, chiefship in a South African homeland was discussed and discussed in the context of Southern African Studies, with the focus on women's empowerment in South Africa, and chiefship was discussed.