In Case there is Another Choice: Colonial Power, ‘Because I Said So.’

“It was in factual stories that the colonial state affirmed its fictions to itself,

in moralizing stories that it mapped the scope of its philanthropic missions…”

• Ann Laura Stoler

The Native Affairs department of the Protectorate of South-West Africa has no desire to understand the affairs they are managing; for their purposes, things can be effectively managed without being understood. Major Pritchard – as Officer-in-Charge of Native Affairs – has no curiosity about the people he sets out to meet in Ovamboland. The Major is a carrier of colonial policy – not only the military, but also the economic and social agenda of Imperial Britain. The policies have been well established, and well before he sets foot in South-West Africa; there will be no reason to change them based on the reality he confronts there. Furthermore, it is not now, and never was within the capacity of the Natives themselves to influence the direction of Empire. The Major doesn’t even count Natives as among the “local people” whom he “interrogated.”¹ The “locals” are Germans, Portuguese, Brits, etc.

The needs of Empire require, “a valuable and permanent source of labour supply for the railways, mines, and other industries of the Protectorate,”² and Pritchard is sure that he can find exactly that in Ovamboland. Luckily, his stubbornly narrow and cynically selfish focus means that he finds exactly what he hoped to:

In addition to a drought of almost three years, following on previous bad harvests, many parts of the country have recently been visited by a plague of caterpillars, which have practically swept the land.

Even if the drought should break, the natives have no seed to sow.

Famine-stricken people, many of whom are blind, are roaming over the land in search of food.³

For an official state-sanctioned report, the Major’s depictions of human suffering are quite vivid, almost even moving. Clearly the situation he encountered in Ovamboland was harsh, even desperate. But the really amazing feat is the translation process of the colonial mind. Immediately after noting such a level of human despair, the Major summarizes the potential benefits to the colonial state. In short,

Circumstances are in our favour, and we should take advantage of the natives’ frame of mind and act. It will be difficult to imagine so unique an opportunity of establishing a political administration in a country in which, in other circumstances, resistance to authority might with reason have been anticipated.⁴

No woman, no cry. These starving natives are ripe for employment on the railways, in the mines, and wherever else the colonizers see fit. This sad story has such a neat and tidy – even… happy? – ending. Those of us living under ‘late’ capitalism might be confused by the Major’s brilliance. The reigning logic of our day – i.e. ‘work or starve,’ – is translated, for those who’ve never encountered wage labor before, into the similar sounding, but very different, ‘you’re starving, so work.’ The connection between the threat of starvation and waged labor is so obvious to Pritchard that he offers no translation or explanation of this premise. In writing to native Chief Martin, the Major states:

I have heard with sorrow that a scarcity of food exists among your people, and that many of them are hungry. The Government will help your people to obtain work in South-West Africa under the protection of its officers.

By the time Pritchard makes it to Ovamboland, this British gem of wisdom had already been firmly established in the brutal (and, by all accounts, needless) stone-crushing labor of the starving Irish (also ‘natives,’ for what it’s worth) some 75 years previous. In time, the National-Socialists will polish Pritchard’s sentiment into the crisp, “Arbeit Macht Frei.” As a greeting for those awaiting slaughter at Auschwitz, “work will make you free,” clarifies Pritchard’s “sympathetic” understanding of the Ovambo plight; the final gift of the civilizing mission is the final solution.

Of course, as Pritchard so aptly puts it, “the time had long since passed when a native tribe, however brave, could engage, with any hope of ultimate success, in hostilities with white troops equipped, as they were, with field and machine guns, magazine rifles, and large quantities of ammunition.”⁵ So, the good Chief Martin (having already been persuaded by the swell missionaries who preceded Pritchard to “accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior”) gratefully accepts the offer to subjugate his entire nation to the capitalist needs of colonial Britain. In fact, as ruler of a starving population, invaded from all sides by well-armed foreigners, Martin sees it as good form to be sure and tell the ‘Great King’ of England that he “had wished to invite the English to [his] country.” Invite them? Putting aside all the logical flaws of that statement, Martin continues to say that he “was pleased when [he] heard that the English were the masters of the country.”⁶ So, can we blame Pritchard for seeking without equivocation to invade and rule over some 16,000 square miles of territory and 156,000 people, when they themselves are so eager to have men like Pritchard as their masters? Of course not, the old major would reassure us!

Then again, such pliant oohing and ahhing on the part of native chiefs may be pleasing to the whites’ egos, but it is by no means the core of colonial machinations. Colonialism is that tyranny of the ‘traditional’ upbringing, whereby the child is obedient ‘Because I Said So,’ and there is always the threat of violence to reinforce the social contract. The ritual of forcing natives to write statements of loyalty – after having degraded them through genocidal violence – serves only to create a narrative of the colonial project in which the father’s thrashings are a gift, a type of protection. Were the natives to carry out precision attacks attempting to drive the invaders from the land, it wouldn’t even slightly alter the white interpretation of themselves as uplifting, parental figures in the colonies.⁷

When the Major learns of Chief Mandume’s troubles with the Portuguese, the ‘assistance’ offered speaks a great deal to the colonial mentality. The colonial powers, having met in Berlin to discuss the matter, drew their borderline (for Angola and South-West Africa) straight through Ovakuanyama land. Then, living straddled underneath two different masters, the Ovakuanyama enter into armed conflict with the Portuguese. Of course, the two sides disagree about who started the fighting⁸, but, “there is little doubt, however, that [native] casualties were enormous.” The Portuguese military admits to have firing, between 7am and 5pm on one day, “no less than 2000 rounds of French ‘.75’ shell,” and killing, “between 4000 and 5000” natives, out of a population of 80,000⁹. Afterwards, “the bodies of the natives, which lay heaped before the trenches, had been sprinkled with petrol and burned.”¹⁰

After this insane outpouring of ammunition and avarice, the Portuguese proceeded to amass troops at the border, intending to further assault the Ovakuanyama. Pritchard assures Chief Mandume that the Portuguese, “would surely not carry hostilities into the Protectorate,” and “that there was much more reason in their fears that the natives might get out of hand.”¹¹ This arrogant and blatantly false sleight of hand is rooted in the basic definition of colonialism. That is to say, a white man needs no permission, from anyone, to bring a caravan of soldiers into Ovamboland, because the only possible people whose permission might be asked for are natives, and their opinion is of no value. The Portuguese can’t be bothered to respect the national boundaries, as established by the indigenous peoples; that much was decided back in Berlin. In contrast, the Portuguese will not enter the Protectorate to carry out the slaughter of the Ovakuanyama, because that would require transgressing a boundary established by the European powers. This is a key distinction, and Pritchard bases all of his decisions in Ovamboland on this notion of official and unofficial borders.

How will Pritchard offer protection to Chief Mandume? He will ask the Portuguese to respect the imperial border, between Angola and South-West Africa, and demand that Mandume move his people to the Protectorate side of the border. In Pritchard’s view,

the opportunity was now given to [Mandume] and his people to settle peacefully in British territory, and that their future prosperity depended upon their obedience… and largely on his own behavior as the chief of the tribe¹². [emphasis added]

In other words, be a good boy Mandume and soon you’ll be in the same submissive state as the “sympathetic” Martin; the 80,000 people of your nation will soon be working on the “railways, mines and other industries” of the Protectorate of South-West Africa. The 64 miles of territory you lost to the Portuguese is simply another side benefit of Massa’s kindness.

  Whatever Pritchard might have found in Ovamboland, he would have described the circumstances as “in our favour,” the people ripe to be put to work. Drafting a report is simply a formality, a ritual attempt to base colonialism in something vaguely else than naked force. Pritchard proves to himself, and his superiors, that they’ve been right all along, that they are doing a good thing. 

1 Pritchard, S.M. (1915). Report on tour to Ovamboland. Paragrapgh #7.

2 Pritchard, S.M. (1915). Report on tour to Ovamboland. Paragrapgh #3.

3 Pritchard, S.M. (1915). Report on tour to Ovamboland. Paragrapgh #88-90.

4 Pritchard, S.M. (1915). Report on tour to Ovamboland. Paragrapgh #101.

5 Pritchard, S.M. (1915). Report on tour to Ovamboland. Paragrapgh # 41.

6 Pritchard, S.M. (1915). Report on tour to Ovamboland. Paragrapgh #63.

7 When the Huaorani successfully kill a plane-load of missionary invaders to their land – aptly understanding the historic role of the mission – the sister of one of the missionaries (Rachel Saint, sister of Nate) takes the killing as proof of the people’s need for Jesus, rather than a clear and straight-forward rejection of the whole civilizing project.

8 Not surprisingly, Pritchard informs Chief Mandume that he has “little doubt” that it was the chief’s “lawless acts” that had been “largely responsible for the state of affairs existing.” Pritchard, S.M. (1915). Report on tour to Ovamboland. Paragrapgh #38.

9 Interestingly, Pritchard doubts these numbers. There’s no reason for the Portuguese to lie, so his impulse to distrust them must be, in and of itself, a type of evasion.

10 Pritchard, S.M. (1915). Report on tour to Ovamboland. Paragrapgh #53-54.

11 Pritchard, S.M. (1915). Report on tour to Ovamboland. Paragrapgh #36.

12 Pritchard, S.M. (1915). Report on tour to Ovamboland. Paragrapgh #60.

The Work of History: As if the ‘Bad Days Will End’

That historians see themselves as part of a ‘profession,’ is a crime (as all professions tend to be). History must always have a use, and to use history towards the ends of a career is a desecration of the aspirations of people for more fulfilling lives – a desecration of human memory. Professional historians do nothing more than satisfy their own obscure curiosities; they cannot answer any of the profound questions which grip our world in these days (though they might like to pretend otherwise). Meanwhile, there is work to be done, and history could be of some value (if it could be salvaged from the jaws of professionalism).
In every historical moment thinking people must not only be able to name the conditions in their society, but also must develop the capacity to make successful interventions to transform it. The activists and theorists that confronted apartheid took up this task boldly and with some skill. Both the analysis of the methods of the apartheid regime and the outrageous claims of the possibility of democracy were of use to people oppressed by apartheid. Certainly there were unexpected developments, wrong choices, overlooked areas, and so forth, but this doesn’t negate the fact that historians (broadly defined¹) were of great use to the liberation struggle in this country. This was no accident. The historians didn’t intend to write boring papers for the academy only to have them, somehow, be both readable and useful to the radical movement. No, historians such as Richard Turner knew exactly why their work could lead to being banned and killed, and set forth to do it anyway.

Now we find ourselves nearly twenty years into the negotiated transition out of apartheid, and so the work of historians has changed. In these ‘victorious’ days, historians have the power (and perhaps the obligation) to both retain the memory of the liberation struggle’s aspirations, and to uncover and demand action to address those social problems which remain unchanged, or which develop as a result of the new ‘regime.’ These may not be employable tasks, and those who engage in them may not receive accolades (even from the so-called ‘party of liberation’) and yet it is vital work, and work that only a historian can do. In specific, some of the broad outline of work for post-apartheid historians includes:

• Concretely analyze structural inequalities and failings (employment, housing, education, etc.) so that the basic facts of the necessary transformations cannot be avoided and
• Even more vitally, help to imagine the methods by which such huge issues can be constructively tackled. Part of this is to seek out and amplify the voice of the various small initiatives which are already in motion, and which propose radical and systemic improvements of entrenched injustices.
• Work to define the new culture of telling history (to children, principally, though of course to adults as well). How will the enormous evasions and blatant lies of apartheid be dismantled? How will we acknowledge the contributions of individuals and organizations that struggled against apartheid, without turning them into heroes, static icons exempt from all critique?
• Retain the vibrancy of militant demands and proposals from previous generations (which could otherwise be ignored, on the basis of being ‘no longer necessary’) and, further,
• To help translate the relevancy of these notions to present-tense problems.
• Even still, historians must also seek out the points in which the liberation movement left inadequate instructions for the construction of the new system (and also points which the liberation movement enshrined in the constitution, and yet are still inadequate, or just plain wrong).
• These weaknesses must be named, concisely, clearly and repeatedly, so that work can be done to re-define our goals, and so that bad habits from the movement days don’t become standard operating procedure (and, as oppressive policies and behaviors develop within the party of liberation, historians must be able to unleash the same level of ridicule and disdain that was once used on Botha and all the rest in previous days).

If historians now need not see themselves as in violent opposition to the ruling state, then the work that needs done is to expand the historical literacy of the general population.

South Africa, as a nation, is at risk of falling to sleep as a result of the ascendancy of the ANC to political power. The ANC doesn’t seem to be giving any indications that it will oppose this collective drift into amnesia, as the party grows more and more comfortable with being an elite organ. Historians in South Africa are not exempt from the general drift of the post-apartheid haze. Without concerted effort, we may well find ourselves slipping into roles as party pundits (replete with sickening compromises and half-stances) or academics of the worst stripe (obsessed with “meta”-level observations of ourselves and our work, rather than actually engaging with social problems). Ironically, it is in these potentially ‘mindless years,’ absent of any great upheavals, that daring and radical historical writing is of the most use. 

The Dead Stir Up Trouble

A young Swiss woman in her twenties stands in a cafe in Observatory and tells anyone who’ll listen of her arrest earlier in the day. The South African police stopped her from protesting against multinational corporations that were complicit in Apartheid and haven’t yet been made to pay any reparations.
The policy of the ANC government is to side with the corporations against the young white do-gooders who have arrived to pressure for ‘justice.’ The risk to the current government has been well demonstrated in the flaming bus loads of civilians in RENAMO’s Mozambique, Lumumba’s early death, and the printing of the $10 Million note in Zimbabwe.

Meanwhile, the activist from Switzerland cries out with indignation, “All we are asking for is R15,000 per person; what will they even be able to do with R15,000?” The issue remains stark in her mind; there are no ambiguities or rough edges. The arrest helps draw the lines even more sharply. She sees only that people were once wronged, and that justice is due in return. The details of what will be necessary to bring about this justice are not interesting to her. She has, at least, the 20 some others who spent the day in jail with her on her side. She has the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the process of de-nazification as historical precedents. But more than anything, she has, quite simply, bald earnestness.
The ANC, by seizing state power through a negotiated transition/truce, has crafted for itself an awkward definition of the state’s role. “The constitutive violence of the state rests, in the end, on the possibility, which can never be dismissed, of refusing to recognize (or to settle) one or another debt.”¹ The preceding rulers were so sure that the debts they’d be expected to pay were insurmountable that they simply set fire to whatever evidence they could burn quickly enough. “In little more than six months in 1993… some 44 metric tons of records from the headquarters of the National Intelligence Service alone were destroyed. There was so much material that state incinerators could not cope; the furnaces of private companies… had to be used.”² But the ANC is striving to characterize itself as the vehicle of officially recognizing and settling the debts of apartheid, and settler-colonialism generally.
In the enshrining logic of the new democracy in South Africa, history stands for the vanquished, and against the architects of race and empire. What do these lofty words mean? At its worst, post-apartheid South Africa is simply a commemorative celebration of the days in which the ANC was an illegal, rebel force. “Commemoration… is part of the ritual of forgetting: one bids farewell to the desire or the willingness to repeat something.”³ If the ANC’s liberatory rhetoric is to bear any fruit, the other reigning logics of the current government will have to be confronted, surmounted.
The new state walks the tortuously narrow path of rectifying past grievances while keeping the guilty happily still ‘at the table.’ Any change which even hints at ‘instability’ will be ruthlessly avoided. There is, essentially, no margin of error. Where will these piles of insignificant R15,000 come from, young lady? No one quite knows for sure. As a matter of hard, economic truth, “Fundamentally, the dead should be formally prohibited from stirring up disorder in the present.”⁴ The question is, can a society settle it’s debts and remain stable?
Like all the butchers before them and since, the National Party’s incinerators have not – and cannot – triumph. The rage of the dead still survives in our memories. Outside of state power, we have the luxury of being morally outraged. All the same, no matter how eloquently or earnestly stated, our shrieks of indignation will not suffice. We will not have justice for the dead simply because their memory compels us to make it so. However broadly defined, reparations is always both moral and material. ‘Something’ tangible will need done to set things right side up again (or for the first time). Until then, remembering is an act of carrying on, of the desire to realize ideals, yet again.

Against the logic of the state, and the strategy of political and economic compromise, both the living and the dead will have to stir up a nice bit of disorder. Insofar as the state’s inevitable role is to “anesthetise the past,” a South Africa that seeks justice must remain – as in the township rebellions of the mid-80s – ungovernable.

 

 

1Mbembe, A. (2002). Power of the archive, and it’s limit, the. Pg. 23

2Bell, T. (2001). Unfinished business: South Africa, Apartheid and truth. RedWorks: Observatory.

3Mbembe, A. (2002). Power of the archive, and it’s limit, the. Pg. 24

4Mbembe, A. (2002). Power of the archive, and it’s limit, the. Pg. 22

Chatterboxes in the Company Gardens

I really enjoy the fact that there’s dozens of crazy loud, silly parrots in the middle of the company gardens. It’s a good break to visit them when walking through the gardens…

Beautiful Cape Town (part four: the beach)

It’s sort of like there’s beach in all directions here. My dad and Maya and I went down past somerset west and strand, southeast of the city some 40km southeast of downtown, to another end of the bay, looking back towards the city.

Beautiful Cape Town (part three: cape point)

My dad and Maya and I went down to Cape Point together. The wind was overwhelming. Down at the very tip, we were nearly being beaten by the wind, so much so that it was basically painful to look down at the lighthouse. Above the beach area, the wind blew ocean mist up onto us from some 200 meters down below. It was so amazing, and enjoyable. Cape Point is breathtaking; I could spend many more hours there.

Beautiful Cape Town (part two: apartment)

Welcome to Cape Town! Says the soprano Saxophone…

This is where I live. On Hope St. My Building is in the upper left.

This is the view from my balcony. Parliament parks beneath my window. On the balcony, I’m tending to a rosemary plant, a basil plant, and a lemon tree. Hopefully, I’ll expand this garden soon.

My “dining room” so to speak.

I’m starting to decorate. Still a bunch of posters and photos that need to go up on the walls.

My dad helped me get this guest bed, which doubles as couch and reading area.

Beautiful Cape Town (part one: the city)

Lots of views of Cape Town are striking to me. Here’s the view looking up at City Hall and Table Mountain behind it. There’s a huge open space here, near the train station and minibus rank, and hundreds of people bustle through here every day and sell all sorts of things.

Here’s the rose garden, within Company Gardens.

The way the clouds linger on the mountain here is called the “tablecloth.”

This is Lion’s head. A lot of times near sun down, the mountain makes for this awesome ray of light.

Here’s a beautiful sunset looking out over the Atlantic, at Sea Point.

The Dark Continent

I arrived in Cape Town on Feb. 1st, to a total black-out in the downtown area. It was quite strange to acclimate to your new home in the pitch dark. Maybe it was a harbinger of something, and hopefully not I guess. The electricity shortage is a major issue in this country, and will not go away for some time. But this silly video of my dark apartment is just for fun.

Meeting Ghosts

“Silences which have been generated through the brutal application of State power will be much harder to unveil.”¹ Everywhere in South Africa, ghosts walk the streets, and are tucked into the architecture. The black people bustling about in downtown Tshwane carry with them the kaffirs walking along in the gutters of Pretoria’s streets, for fear of being shoved into traffic by the whites. What’s worse is that the whites aren’t even there to see what has become of their prized spaces, now that the fascist infrastructure of influx control is gone. The malls are full now of the whites that once might have leisurely strolled through company gardens; and more and more malls are under construction. What few interactions between whites and blacks are afforded by the new arrangement are dominated by displays of black misery and pitifulness, in theater meant to dissuade the white from simply gritting his teeth and walking on without sharing a measly rand.

In other words, what have we got to say to each other? What, with this history between us, and stuffing our mouths like cotton balls, what have we got to say to one another? Assuming, for a moment, that we (whites) are able to acknowledge that we have not the foggiest idea what it’s like to live in Guguletu… then what?

I walk the streets expecting that no one wants to talk to me. I criticize myself for that demeanor, but I’m also not sure that I’m wrong. I make clumsy attempts to find points of engagement with the many strangers I encounter on a daily basis. I asked my waiter for advice on falling in love. He replied, “Yes, I’ll bring you the drink menu.” Pushing further, he told me, “Is it a colored woman you’re in love with? Because colored people are stupid, and dangerous.” Pushing still further, he says, “If it’s good, the love, then it must go slowly; if not, it can go faster.” And from there we are able to talk about his home in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and why he has left, and how it is to live here. There: a moment of genuine connection tucked in-between all the rest of it. No small accomplishment, actually.

I arrive home at 10pm, oddly proud of myself for having conquered the seemingly irrational fear of the night that made me second guess the 15 minute walk from the movie theater. My key opens the gate, once again, as it always does. In the second lock, the door to the main hallway, the key just spins and spins, as it has never done before, leaving me trapped between a metal gate and a glass doorway. Confused and distraught, I try and think through possible plans to get out of the situation. After a few moments a young white woman walks out of the garage and then up the stairs to her apartment. I signal to her and knock frantically, trying to get her attention. She sees me, and walks on.

I decide to simply push the buzzers one by one, in the hope that someone will want to let me in. The first buzzer turns out to be the young woman. When I tell her of the situation, she says, “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you in. Someone tried to break-in to my space a few months back, and I’m totally paranoid. I’m sorry.” With some effort, I’m able to convince her that I am indeed her neighbor, and she lets me in – but the fear never really dissipates.
This is some country to live in, this liberated South Africa, with the fear seeping from every pore.

For more than fifty years now, some of the most brilliant minds of this country have spoken out in the interests of not being engulfed by fear. Alan Paton eloquently and hauntingly asked us to imagine how many generations would have to pass before the nation’s children could be raised without having to forgo the beautiful and joyful ‘luxuries’ of being human. Nelson Mandela told the court that even in his efforts to build a military force capable of unnerving and unsettling the white government, he sought a path that would allow blacks and whites to live without bitterness in the end. In fact, Mandela repeatedly offered white society an option to simply desist, to simply begin the process that we are now – at least in theory – involved in. Of course, they did not desist, and so this beloved country is still mired in its own unraveling.
Rian Malan, in describing his motivations for leaving South Africa in 1979, wrote, “I ran away because I was scared of the coming changes, and scared of the consequences of not changing… I ran away because I hated Afrikaners and loved blacks. I ran away because I was an Afrikaner and feared blacks… It was quite clear, even to a little boy, that blacks were violent, and inscrutable, and yet I loved them. It was also clear that they were capable, kind, and generous, and yet I was afraid of them.”² The paradox that Malan describes is only visible to those who are trying not to simply be swept away by the foulness of their society. For many whites – then and now – there is only the fear, the endless stories of violence and theft committed by ‘them,’ and the thousand-and-one habits developed to rationalize and survive a culture of paranoia. According to Depelchin, “The fears of the rulers, the whites and the men is irrational… their only vision and understanding of the world [is] such that they [cannot] conceive of blacks NOT doing to them what they had inflicted… for generations… [If] humanity is going to be saved will definitely depend on whether men, the rulers and the whites are willing to accept that humanity can be seen and salvaged if, and only if, they are willing to see it through the prism of all of the wretched of the earth.”³

It feels as if we are suspended in the eery combination of both the changes Malan anticipated in ‘79, and the consequences of not changing, as well. South Africa has the lofty distinction of being the last white-minority government to fall. Cecil Rhodes’ imagined hinterland was born here, and will eventually die here; the Rhodesians may have held on to their bitterness till the bitter end, but they fled here when the shit finally blew up in their face. Every citizen of this country will pay – for many years to come – for the unprecedented ’sticking-power’ of the race-haters here. The payback will not be a grand explosion, an orgasm of retribution, but rather a steady and persistent gnawing away at the fabric of our lives.

Every place has its own hell – and its own lies to explain and reinforce it. In South Africa, rising out of the inferno will require disassembling the gargantuan lie that ‘South Africa is a White country.’ That sentence alone – meant seriously and shoved down the nation’s throat in hundreds of policies – leaves a legacy of distance between people, in proportions nearly unfathomable. There is no greater silencing than to simply remove tens of thousands of people from the census, year after year. That the majority of this nation was not simply erased by the master-planners of apartheid is a testament to their tenacious desire to exist, to be human, to be heard. But all of the tremendous initiatives of the liberation struggle could only force a situation in which blacks are not not-granted human status. To actually co-exist is the work of the days ahead – and it may well prove to be more grueling than the war against apartheid.