Mkhize family history

Posted on June 22, 2011

In researching the history of African families in KwaZulu-Natal, like that of the Mkhize or abaseMbo, the temptation is strong to use material found in books like Magema Fuze's Abantu Abamnyama, first published in 1922, and A.T.Bryant's Olden Times in Zululand and Natal, first published in 1929, without taking enough account of what later critics have had to say about their ideas. Fuze's book has so far attracted little critical attention from historians, mainly because it was written in isiZulu and until recently few academic historians in South Africa could read or speak isiZulu. Hlonipha Mokoena's recently published study of Fuze from a literary perspective - Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual, UKZN Press, 2011 - marks a huge step forward in scholarly commentary on his work: now we need historians to add their voices. By contrast, Bryant has attracted critical attention from academic historians for more than forty years.

Today we can see that while Bryant's Olden Times is full of important historical detail, and is an indispensable source on family history, many of his broader ideas have little basis in evidence. This applies particularly to his ideas about ‘tribal migrations', and to his classification of the African peoples of the KwaZulu-Natal region as 'Nguni', with subdivisions into 'Ntungwa', 'eMbo', 'Lala', and other groups. In addition, his assumption that African 'oral traditions', while often contradictory in their details, could be taken as containing a 'core' of undisputed fact, has been overtaken by more critically oriented approaches. In order to understand oral histories as sources of information on the past, historians now seek to unpack them not just for 'facts' but also for what meanings these histories carried for the people who narrated them, and why these people narrated them in particular ways.

Archaeological research over the last forty years, together with analysis of group histories recorded in the literature, suggest that the historically known families of KwaZulu-Natal did not 'migrate' into the region ready made, as it were. They emerged inside the region in a complex process of social and political interactions, whose origins go back to the arrival of the earliest farming communities some 1700 years ago. These interactions involved various combinations of long-distance migrations, local movements, splitting of groups, amalgamations of groups, subordination of some groups by others, and the voluntary giving of allegiance by some groups to others. Over time, it was common for groups gradually to change their identities, and even their names, to fit in with new social and political circumstances.

By the same token, like people everywhere, groups often found it expedient gradually to change the histories which they told to themselves, and to other groups, in order to explain who they were, and what right they had to live where they did. Older histories were gradually forgotten as new ones were constructed. Often, pieces of older history became mixed up with newer history, to produce contradictory versions which today puzzle many historians. Political conflicts within groups also produced different versions of the past. For instance, a particular family or 'house' might claim that it had a better right to rule than the existing ruling house, and would seek to demonstrate this by narrating a version of the past that favoured this claim. The ruling house would vigorously resist by narrating a version which supported its own position. Over time, the political roots of these different constructions of the past would often become lost, leaving many later historians again to puzzle over what the 'facts' were.

In the case of the Mkhize people, the notion that an established nation known as the abaMbo or abaseMbo migrated into south-eastern Africa as part of a movement of 'Nguni' has little evidence to support it. The group which, by at least the early nineteenth century, was known as the Mkhize, is more likely to have emerged inside what is now KwaZulu-Natal from numbers of different ancestral communities whose names have long since been forgotten. The way in which the Mkhize acquired the name 'abaseMbo' is itself open to discussion. The word abasembo, whose meaning is not certain, seems to have a long history in the KwaZulu-Natal region, but some historians today are arguing that it did not become applied to the Mkhize until the time of Shaka in the 1820s, for reasons that have to do with the particular politics in which Shaka's Zulu polity subjugated neighbouring peoples. This was the period, these historians argue, when the new Zulu ruling house was applying names like amantungwa, amalala, amadebe, amanhlwenga and others to various groups of its subjects. All these identities have histories which need to be examined in detail.

The historical relationships between the Mkhize and groups like the amaSwati, AmaHlubi, AmaMpondo, AmaMpondomise, AmaDlamini, AmaKhuze, AmaXesibe and others also need to be carefully assessed. Were they actually offshoots of one ancestral group? Were they actually genealogically related? Where does the evidence for this come from? Is it an idea that particular people in recent times have wanted to believe? If so, why do they want to believe it? What particular political and social reasons might they have for wanting to see the past in this way? Academic historians today ask questions like this about all their sources, written and oral. For these historians, asking such questions is as important as telling a story.

John Wright is an associate of the Universities of KwaZulu-Natal and the Witwatersrand.