The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

populist resistance to state interference”, in spite of the passage of the Natives’ Land Act
of 1913. Maine’s life would be able to shed light on the historical complexities of rural
relations between sharecroppers, labour tenants, wage labourers, and white farmers and
landlords. It would also account for black respectability, dignity and resistance, as well
as “the social codes and etiquette of race relations”. 151
Since 1979 when the first interview with Maine took place, more than 60 interviews with
Maine were conducted, 20 with his black farmer cohort, and “dozens” with traders,
lawyers and landlords. More than 50 interviews with members of Maine’s family gave
insight to the dynamics of patriarchal control and the ways in which it was subverted
and challenged. Oral testimony on such a large scale allowed for “a great deal of cross‐
checking for accuracy and internal consistency”. Nevertheless, in a methodological
argument similar to Keegan’s, Van Onselen suggested that unless such oral evidence
was able “to square” with documentary evidence, in all its magnitude it “counts for
little”. With this perspective, Van Onselen’s “lucky break” came when 850 documents
were handed over by the Maine family after Kas Maine’s death. Maine had kept these
hidden in plastic bags in his shack. Among them were letters, receipts, church
membership cards, licences for dogs, bicycles, cars, tractors, passes granting movement
for business purposes, receipts for livestock and grain transactions. These served to
provide “incontrovertible” evidence of a sharecropping life. 152
Van Onselen also tried to engage with the difficulties of the changing “knowledge
transactions” between interviewer and interviewee over time, the differences of age,
colour, class and gender, the issues of language and translation and those of subjectivity,
memory and reliability. 153 In particular, he pointed to the ways that language choice in a
multi‐cultural setting could influence the researcher’s effectiveness. When material was
‘generated’ in a second or third language, “the resulting product will in itself partly
151 Charles van Onselen, ‘The Reconstruction of a Rural Life’, pp 502‐3.
152 Charles van Onselen, ‘The Reconstruction of a Rural Life’, pp 503‐6.
153 I have written on these issues elsewhere with Gary Minkley. See Gary Minkley and Ciraj
Rassool, ‘Orality, Memory and Social History in South Africa’. Here I have drawn upon this work.
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