Clearing the Muddy Waters: Jeff Peires and The Great Treks

Abstract

Twenty years ago 1 had the pleasure of reviewing a volume of papers on precolonial Southern Africa edited by Jeff pekes.' Titled Before and After Shah: Papers in Xguni Histoy, it was based on a workshop held at Rhodes University in 1979. Among the contributors were Julian Cobbing, Phil Bonner, Jeff Guy. John Wright, Patrick Harries and Leroy Vail. 1 was somy to have missed the workshop, because the papers breathed a spirit of cooperative enquiry as well as a willingness to revise outworn interpretations. Two decades on, the contributors have gone their separate ways. Vail sadly went to an early grave. Others have had serious health scares. Some have not spoken for years. The spirit of cooperation in challenges to old orthodoxies, which promised so much, evaporated. I have often wondered at the barely perceptible processes by which Young Turks are turned into the Old Guard. Perhaps the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune take their toll on all of us. For whatever reasons, Peires presents a prime example of a scholar whose mind has closed. His review presents no new evidence, opens no new lines of enquiry, and brooks no questioning of established lines of interpretation. Peires is, of course, entitled to his opinions, and for that reason I was tempted to leave his strident accusations unanswered. The lively rejoinders to his own book, The Dead will Arise, remind us of the times when he has had to take it as well as dish it out2 However, it seems to me that those who teach that 'history is an argument without end' have a duty to respond when basic questions of evidence and interpretation are raised. This journal, I know, is primarily intended for mature scholars, but I hope readers will pardon me for writing as if for an interested audience of under-graduate students. Who knows? It is not inconceivable that debate on some of the propositions I have put forward might some day form the basis for a university text.