The Historiographical Development of the Concept “mfecane” and ...

Soon after his arrival at Lovedale he published his first book - South Africa As It
Is – which was written with the aim of attracting British immigrants to the Cape
Colony. It included a short historical account of South Africa, which was entirely
conventional. The history of Africans was treated separately from the story of
the colony, a pattern Theal took from Wilmot’s book. 63 Separating the histories
of Africans and Europeans in South Africa would be typical of all Theal’s
subsequent publications. He also closely followed Holden and Shaw’s tentative
Zulu-centric ideas, 64 though without acknowledging them - for instance, when
he attributed the devastations in the highveld to waves of violence and
indiscriminate bloodshed radiating ever further out from the Zulu centre to the
Mantatees, Sotho-speakers, Tswana-speakers and then as far west as the San
in the Kalahari. 65 These were key features of Theal’s treatment of the mfecane
narrative in this and all of his future books.
Three years later, the Compendium of South African History and Geography, a
more extensive and exclusively historical work, appeared. It was born out of the
need to provide a textbook for teaching history and was used extensively in
schools, above all for African learners. Theal, who claimed to have collected
African oral testimonies, subsequently received much feedback from literate
Africans, which was incorporated into the widely circulated third edition in
1877. 66 In his account of the mfecane, he concentrated on the coastal regions
of the eastern Cape, Natal and Zululand, with developments in the Transgariep
receiving only scant attention. He further explored the Zulu-centric idea as is
evident in his narrative of the history of the Ngwane. Theal’s treatment of the
Ngwane chiefdom exposes his underlying ideas about African history. Unlike
the missionary tradition prevalent at Lovedale and Shepstone’s view in his 1875
article, where the Ngwane were regarded as victims, Theal in this and all
following books followed the pro-settler view that the Ngwane were a deadly
menace to Africans as well as to the Cape Colony. For him, the Ngwane’s
63 Wilmot et al., History of Cape Colony.
64 Holden, ‘Brief History of O.F.S.', 342. Shaw, Story of my Mission, 520-21.
65 G.M. Theal, South Africa As It Is (King William's Town, 1871).
66 Theal, Compendium.
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