Hlonipha Mokoena
As the author of Abantu Abamnyama Lapa Bavela Ngakona (1922), Magema Fuze is a classic example of how first-generation converts made the transition from oral to literate cultures, the homestead to the mission and from being ‘native informants’ to being kholwa intellectuals. The kholwa had no secure cultural or political identity, caught as they were in the ‘Natal-Zululand divide’, between the promise of full and equal incorporation into colonial society and the ties that bound them to traditional society and culture.
In this book, Hlonipha Mokoena suggests that kholwa identity was fashioned through the practice of bricolage – the cobbling together, in indeterminate and sometimes contradictory ways, of elements from both colonial and indigenous cultures. The amakholwa used the instruments of cultural imperialism, namely petitions, letters, books and newspapers, to create a signature resistance to subjugation and conquest.
Writing as an aspirant historian, Magema Fuze’s literary life represents a black intellectual tradition whose potential was not realised. Beyond his work as a printer and scribe it is worth adding another role, namely that Fuze was a popular historian, who attempted to write histories whose intimate resonances would not only appeal to his readers but also rouse their nationalistic sentiments.
Hlonipha Mokoena is assistant professor of Anthropology at Columbia University in the City of New York. Her main area of interest is South African intellectual history. This is her first book.
