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

eliable sources of information but as sources of information about the past that
demonstrate the norms and values and peoples’ perceptions of their own
past’. 61
Mfecane Historiography after 1928
In 1928 Walker, when taking Theal’s Zulu-centric, geographically-integrated
mfecane narrative and giving it a Xhosa neologistic name, Mfecane,
transformed this history into something which was larger than the sum of its
parts. This was the version of the mfecane narrative which had been repeated
virtually unchanged by most historians up to the 1960’s. The following short
précis on the historiography of the mfecane narrative after 1928 is based mainly
on two short historiographical pieces by Wright and Saunders. 62
From the 1920s professional liberal historians came to dominate southern
African history writing in the English language. While rejecting Theal’s racist
approach to African history, their own attitude towards Africans was ambiguous.
On the one hand they rejected African culture as inferior and barbarous, but
believed that Africans could reach “civilization” with the help of Europeans. On
the other they regarded African history as an integral part of the southern
African past and not just an adjunct to colonial history. Few concentrated on
mfecane history, because of an overwhelming concern for the contemporary
political, economic and social issues, race relations and a focus on the
progression of events whereby Africans and colonists were drawn into a
common society. Wright concurs that ‘African history was largely discounted by
liberal intellectuals, and the study of African societies was increasingly seen as
belonging to the emerging discipline of anthropology rather than history’. He
maintained that ‘anthropologists were by and large much more concerned with
the nature and operation of African “social systems” than they were with
61 Golan, Inventing Shaka, 143.
62 Wright, ‘Political Mythology', 272-91. and C.C. Saunders, 'Pre-Cobbing Mfecane
Historiography', in Hamilton (ed), Mfecane Aftermath, 21–34. But, also based on J. Cobbing,
'So Dreadful a Storm: The Textual Evolution of the Mfecane‘, Paper - 1st Draft, Rhodes
University, 29 March 1996, 1-41. and Tisani, ‘Xhosa Historiography'.
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