Tariq West, 1 of 7

The Colonial Identity Machine

A. Tariq West
Kathryn Mathers
Thursday, February 8th 2007
IHUM 27a – Encounters and Identities
Paper #1

In order to achieve the social and economic ends of subjugation and exploitation,

European colonizers in Southern Africa assigned identities to the native peoples under their

rule that were congruent with these goals. They assigned them economic identities as wage

laborers and physical human capital; social identities as inferiors, children and servants; and

ethnic identities as strong and wayward Mpondo, docile Mozambicans and high endurance

Sotho. Under this system, the indigenous peoples of the lands that would become South

Africa had to couch survival, cooperation and resistance in the terms of the social and

economic traditions of their conquerors. Social, ethnic and economic self-identifications were

similarly recast relative to the expectations and attitudes of those in power.

This restructuring of native identities relative to white authority is very much evident,

among other places, in the South African mining compounds of the 20th century. The

dimensions of identity most notably affected here are ethnicity and age as a component as

gender. This second dimension relates, in my usage, to what distinguishes in terms of

behavior, the man from the boy. The faction fighting that took place in these mining

communities reveals the recasting of ethnic identities relative to white economic power and

more subtly, the redefinition of behaviors suited to adult males, relative to the paternalistic

social attitudes of white mine management.

In order to understand how native ethnic self-identification developed relative to

white economic power embodied by the mine management, we must examine the practices of

mine management. It was typical in these mines that “different types of jobs were allotted to
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certain groups and certain recreational activities were condoned for some groups but not for

others,” (Moodie 184). According, for instance, to the testimony of Ernest Cezula who

worked on the Crown Mines in the 1940s, “Mozambicans and Sotho make good lashers

because they don’t tire easily” and “Most of the machine boys are Mpondo, because they are

strong” (Moodie 184). Cezula notes also that “Some of the Sotho are jealous but they can do

nothing because the Mpondo are so strong,” (Moodie 184). In other words, supposed

physical abilities characteristic of a group determined the jobs assigned to them, which in

turn determined their criteria for self-identification which would play into how they related to

other ethnic groups.

The effects of management assignments are evident not only along the occupational

lines discussed but also along social or behavioral lines. As a statement from a 1938 report

on faction fighting saying, “natives of this race [Basuto] are arrogant and overbearing in

manner and are inclined to pin-prick natives of other races if they are numerically stronger,”

(Moodie 184) suggests, entire groups were broadly assessed a certain personality. This

assignment of personality may have related to some reality of interaction between groups at

some point, but broad generalizations like this one likely set in stone a supposed group

characteristic which was arrived at through observation of only a few incidences of the

personality defining behavior. This leads me to question the soundness of the Mpondo

“reputation for being trouble-makers”, related by Cezula, as an organic characteristic of the

Mpondo. It is very possible that the Mpondo reputation was earned assigned to them by

white management as a result a few incidences of trouble in which they were seen by

management as perpetrators. It seems likely to me that this reputation was then embraced by

the Mpondo and their neighbors as an identifying characteristic of the Mpondo because it

was the assignment of those in power. The testimony of mine worker Mitilisho Mdibaniso,
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that often times, “the management would favor the Sotho [in arbitrating a dispute] because

the Mpondo had a reputation for making trouble,” (Moodie 188) validates this view as it

places the manager as an assigner of identity. This understanding is validated further by

Mdibaniso’s claim that, “The Mpondo accepted this [the manager’s deciding against them

because of their reputation] because the manager’s word was final,” (Moodie 188). This

supposedly natural characteristic of the Mpondo was in effect systematically reinforced by

the behaviors of the white management, and accepted by the black workers because they had

little choice in the matter.

The white management in the mines approached their subordinates in much the way

that a parent might approach a wayward child: rewarding at times, punishing at others, and

acting as an intermediary at yet others. The character of the faction fights which took place in

the mines often conformed to this “wayward child” understanding held by the management,

even by criteria culturally relevant to the native laborers. Consider for instance that observers

of a number of traditional cultures, including those of the Transkei, Xhosa, Sotho and

Mpondo, note that inter-village fights between young men occurred often and that these

childhood duels were even encouraged, but that this violence among young males was

generally, “abandoned with the transition to manhood symbolized by initiatory

circumcision,” (Moodie 192). Fighting was not appropriate behavior, in other words, for an

adult male. The comments of Sotho mine laborers on the subject confirm this distinction

between the behavior of a boy and that of a man saying, “We don’t fight after we have been

circumcised,” (Moodie 192). The statement of one President Steyn Mine worker before an

inquiry commission on mine violence, “Treat us like boys and we’ll behave like boys”

(Moodie 192), goes to the core of the issue of native redefinition of manhood relative to

management’s paternalistic attitudes. Faction fighting often occurred when the structures
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setup by management to handle worker grievances failed to adequately address them. They

were in this sense a “practice of politics by violent means” (Moodie 180). Take for instance

the police account of a Xhosa-Pondo fight in a Crown Mines compound in which a group of

Mpondo went to the induna to seek a resolution to their maltreatment by Xhosa boss boys.

When the induna failed to adequately address their complaint, they turned to violence. In

order to appease the Mpondo, the mine manager dismissed two Xhosa boss-boys (Moodie

188). When we consider the political aims of these fights in securing the attention and

arbitration of management, it seems that they were very much a result of a management

paternalism which denied workers adequate control over their own affairs. The workers were

in a sense were “acting out” like a toddler might to receive his mother’s attention.

Another revealing locus of the formation of native identities relative to white colonial

power makes itself available, albeit more subtly, in the examination of the relationships

between John Dalton and black residents of Qolorha by Sea, a contemporary Xhosa

community. Dalton, a white South African, claims to be one with the Xhosa people he lives

among as he declares saying, “I have lived here all my life. So have my fathers before me….I

am one with these people,” (Mda 180). His true position relative to the townspeople becomes

apparent, however, in a number of statements which evidence paternalism towards his black

neighbors. At one point he says, “Spitting is one thing he is not prepared to tolerate among

his people,” (Mda 118), suggesting that he tolerates other habits which he finds displeasing

out of magnanimity towards his clients. Dalton’s friend, Camagu, an educated black South

African remarks on Dalton’s attempts at developing Qolorha saying, “That is the main

problem with you, John. You know that you are ‘right’ and you want to impose your

‘correct’ ideas on the population from above. I am suggesting that you try involving these

people in decision-making rather than making decisions for them,” (Mda 180).
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Dalton’s relationship with the Xhosa who he lives among cannot be abstracted from

the relationship of his great grandfather to the people he presided over as a magistrate and

exploited as a trader. Nor can his relationship be completely differentiated from the client

patron relationship of the 20th century white mine management and black mineworker. His

relationship with the Xhosa of Qolorha is riddled with the vestiges of an attitude expressed

by his great grandfather’s contemporary Sir George Cathcart in the statement, “We are

achieving what we set out to do. The Xhosa are becoming useful servants, consumers of our

goods, contributors to our revenue,” (Mda 257). His credit-lending, provision of goods and

services and employment of natives through his store reinforces a native economic identity a

hundred years in the making, as wage earners and as consumers. This is the identity that

people such as Xoliswa, the principal of Qolorha’s school, embrace with statements such as

“It is a backward movement [the wearing of traditional garments]. All this nonsense about

bringing back African traditions! We are civilized people. We have no time for beads and

long pipes!” (Mda 160) Their conceptions of identity and worth are tied closely to what they

call “civilization”, and what might be identified as a bizarre synthesis of the Euro-Christian

consumerist identity glorified by Sir George and Black Nationalism. As Camagu points out

in his statement with regard to Dalton’s relationship with the people of Qolorha, “Your

people love you because you do things for them. I am talking of self-reliance where people

do things for themselves,” (Mda 248) the people of Qolorha are clients of the white economic

establishment. They earn their wages from the Blue Flamingo Hotel or other white tourist

supported establishments and spend them with Dalton.

The vestiges of assigned colonial identities are seen elsewhere in Dalton’s relations

with the Xhosa natives. When, for instance, Bhonco, a Xhosa elder and friend of Dalton’s,

hitches a ride with him, he rides in back despite their supposed current equality. This self-
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identification by Bhonco as an inferior, however vestigial, is congruent with other facets of

his relationship with Dalton. When he goes to Dalton’s store requesting to buy tobacco and

corned beef on credit, and Dalton denies the request, he prostrates himself to Dalton in hopes

of winning his favor in the matter. He later expresses his humiliation at having had to beg

upon learning that “the white man had smiled” upon his wife, that is, her employers has paid

her (Mda 11).

In relating the formation of native identities to the attitudes and expectations of white

power as I have, I risk placing the destiny of the black South African peoples, in terms of

their individual and collective identities, in a domain completely removed from their control.

My intent herein is rather to identify the ways in which these identities conformed, leaving

open the possibility of later reformation of identities by black South Africans on their own

terms. We are all, to some greater or lesser extent, beholden to the systems of social and

economic power under which we live for the definition of some part of our identities. I

believe there is, however, also the potential for individuals and peoples to define their

identities in terms relevant both to the social and economic present and a past, and future, of

dignified traditions.
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Works Cited

Mda, Zakes. The Heart of Redness. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000. 11-257.

Moodie, T. Dunbar, and Vivienne Ndatshe. Going for Gold. Berkley & Los Angeles, CA:
University of California P, 1994. 180-211.