A historical survey of the development of political awareness among the Zulus
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Date
1989
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Abstract
This study deals with the political development of the largest African population group in South Africa, the 'Zulus. The political development of the Zulus is assessed by the performances of individual Zulu leaders. The study thus focuses on the achievements/failures of some Zulu leaders, namely King Shaka, J L Dube, Albert Luthuli, Dr A B Xuma, A W G Champion, and Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. It becomes apparent from this that the Zulu leadership had very often been involved in some way or another in organizations that strove for the upliftment or "freedom" of the disadvantaged population groups in South Africa. This historical survey covers indeed a very wide period. It stretches from the pre-colonial period up to the present; the present being the era of the KwaZulu/Natal Indaba.
The first individual under discussion is King Shaka, followed in subsequent chapters by the individuals referred to above. It is important at this juncture to elaborate on the relationship between individual action, history and society. History and society are made by constant and more or less purposeful individual action and that individual action, however purposeful, is in turn made by history and society. How do we, as active subjects, make a world of objects which then, as it were, become subjects making us their objects?
It is the problem of individual and society, consciousness and being, action and structure. People make their own history - but only under definite circumstances and conditions: we act through a world of rules which our actions create, break and renew - we are creatures of rules, the rules are our creations: we make our own world - the world confronts us as an implacable and autonomous system of social/political facts. It is through the specific institutions of time and space that structures larger than the individual become a living reality and are reproduced; it is in the small segments of society that experiences are forged. Hence this study focuses on KwaZulu and Natal and on some individuals at a particular moment in time.
The problem "structuring" however, means that a return to the local and individual cannot absolve us from a regional as well as a national and indeed an international perspective. Over recent years, historians and social scientists have agonized over their "unit study." Yet as the Dutch historian Jan Huizinga remarked, "Every historical fact opens immediately to infinity." More important than the starting point is the way in which the local and the particular are located within a wider context, and in turn enable us to refine our understanding of that wider context. Natal, the smallest of the four provinces of what became the Union of South Africa in 1910, cannot be understood outside the broader changes in Southern Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Twentieth century South Africa is better understood only after we have contemplated King Shaka in his confrontation with White settlers.
Description
Dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree Master of Arts, University of Zululand, 1989.
Keywords
Political participation, Zulu (African people)--Political activity