The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

consciousness, conversations, and/or recitals of fact”. 189 Each mode of examination
revealed different meanings. In the process, the evolving subjectivity of the informants
was examined through
an exploration of one of the more intimate private domains within
which power is fought over, and consciousness born ‐ those of
personal life, family, community, and experience. 190
What was particularly important and useful about the conception of lives in this project
was achieved through the notions of ‘life worlds’, ‘life cycles’ and ‘life strategies’. It is
around the ‘life strategies’ of the women, in particular, that their consciousness was
organised. This was shaped in their childhood, drawing upon pre‐industrial
circumstances and later, adding to it from the “exigencies of life” on the fringes of the
city. The consciousness and social identity of the women emerged as fragmented, each
fragment with a history and a connection to prevailing discourse. This conceptualisation
reflected deeper theorisation about conceptions of selves and the production of
identities, beyond merely connecting the individual and the social. This began to raise
the relationship between biography and autobiography and touch on the biographical
ways in which lives were lived. 191
In examining the political careers of two ‘second‐tier’ Zulu nationalist leaders, Paul la
Hausse produced a study of nationalist politics and culture, and contradictory identities
and affiliations. He explored the world of the cultural intermediary and political broker
“moving between the worlds of the powerful and the powerless at a moment of
profound social and economic rupture”. Through the political and intellectual careers of
189 Belinda Bozzoli with Mmantho Nkotsoe, Women of Phokeng, p 6.
190 Belinda Bozzoli with Mmantho Nkotsoe, Women of Phokeng, p 3. In the process as well, the important
place of Mmantho Nkotsoe received firmer acknowledgement ‐ as more than just agterryer. Although it is
clear that Bozzoli took responsibility of authorship in the ‘writing‐up’ phase (particularly with Nkotsoe
having left the project in the last stages) and that the ODP division of labour between field interviewer
and researcher was enforced, it seems as if the decisiveness of Nkotsoe’s place in the evolution of this
project was noted, even if as part of an examination of the interviews as ‘texts’. It also seems as if an
intervention at a late stage, perhaps by the publishers, or by the publisher’s manuscript readers, may
have contributed to Nkotsoe being placed as subsidiary (if not joint) author. Nevertheless, some, like
Charles van Onselen himself, continued to refer to Bozzoli as the sole author of Women of Phokeng. See
Charles van Onselen, ‘The Reconstruction of a Rural Life’, p 514.
191 Belinda Bozzoli with Mmantho Nkotsoe, Women of Phokeng, pp 235‐242.
174