Theophilus Shepstone and the Forging of Natal: African
Autonomy and Settler Colonialism in the Making of Traditional Authority is an
account of the life of Theophilus Shepstone, Secretary for Native Affairs in
the Colony of Natal from 1846 to 1876 and an examination of the nature of the
concept of traditional authority in South Africa today.
Speakers: Keith Breckenridge and Jeff Guy
Tuesday, 1st October 2013 at
6pm in the WiSER Seminar Room, 6th Floor, Richard Ward Building, East
Campus, Wits University
Refreshments will be served.
Please RSVP: Najibha.Deshmukh@wits.ac.za
As originally conceived the book intended to place Shepstone
in the context provided by some of Jeff Guy’s previous books (The Destruction
of the Zulu Kingdom, 1979; The Heretic: a Study of the Life of John William
Colenso, 1983. The View Across the River: Harriette Colenso and the Zulu
struggle against Imperialism, 2001). But, in the process of researching and
writing, it became apparent that such widely used concepts as indirect rule and
segregation, so often associated with Shepstone, had lost whatever explanatory
value they might have had. Furthermore the urgent contemporary debates in South
Africa over the nature of customary law and traditional authority and their
role in a constitutional democracy suggested strongly that Shepstone’s part in
their origins should be re-assessed. The book does this however, not by a
process of political theorization, but by placing the arguments very
deliberately in a historical narrative and the development of personality and
character in their own times. This is done out of the conviction that, unless
understood as history, the most contentious contemporary issues will continue
to be misunderstood.
Few can
claim to have mastered the nineteenth century history of the KwaZulu-Natal
region, but Jeff Guy can.
- - Vukile Khumalo
