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

Godlonton and Arbousset. 42 These writers exhibited a morbid fascination with
cannibals which, through the process of repetition, spread through nearly all
mfecane works and was thus incorporated prominently into Theal’s Zulu-centric,
geographically-integrated mfecane narrative, but not into Walker’s version. 43
Modern studies of cannibalism present two contradictory results. According to
Arens there is no credible description of people eating people in the literature
and that ‘the idea of “others” as cannibals, rather then the act, is the universal
phenomenon. The significant question is not why do people eat human flesh,
but why one group invariably assumes that others do’. 44 This latter issue can
also be found in the mfecane literature, such as when Arbousset reported on a
chiefdom which Sotho-speaking people described as cannibals and thus too
dangerous to visit. A glance at his map shows that Arbousset noted the areas of
cannibal villages, but, because he never visited them, he had no first-hand
knowledge of them. 45 Some of the chiefdoms designated as cannibals were
politically aligned to the Tlokwa state, which served to further blacken their
image. The only “cannibals” the French missionaries met were those, who so
they were assured, had been reformed by Moshoeshoe, which further
expanded his hagiography. Likewise, none of the cannibals in Natal were ever
visited by Europeans and their anthropophagi described. It is thus clear that
‘both Europeans and Arabs seem to have a morbid interest in cannibalism and
ten to one accept almost any tale told them about it’, 46 as Evans-Pritchard put it.
Sanday, however, whose study of fifteen ancient and modern societies showed
that eleven of these had experience of cannibalism, contradicted Arens idea.
Sanday clarified this in two ways. Firstly, this eating of human flesh was only a
ritualistic practice and no humans were ever a food source. Secondly, none of
42 [Wesleyan Minister], ‘Letter of 10 December 1833'. Godlonton, Introductory Remarks, I.
Arbousset et al., Narrative of an Exploratory Tour.
43 'Cannibalism in South Africa', 195-96. 'Cave Cannibals', 641-45. Bryant, ‘Man-Eaters of
Bantuland', 12-17. Theal, History of Boers. Walker, History of South Africa.
44 Arens, W. The Man-Eating Myth (New York, 1979), 139.
45 Arbousset et al., Narrative of an Exploratory Tour, 54-79, 271, 287, map.
46 Quote by Evans-Pritchard, in Arens, Man-Eating Myth, xiii.
192