To Swim with Crocodiles: land, violence and belonging in South Africa, 1800-1996 by Jill E Kelly

Abstract

Reviewed by: To Swim with Crocodiles: land, violence and belonging in South Africa, 1800-1996 by Jill E Kelly Sibongiseni Mkhize (bio) Jill E Kelly (2019) To Swim with Crocodiles: land, violence and belonging in South Africa, 1800-1996. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press; East Lansing: Michigan State University Press The Valley of a Thousand Hills is famous for its scenic routes and picturesque, rolling hills. It is famous as the route of two major international sport events, the Comrades ultra-Marathon and the Dusi Canoe Marathon. Both events start in Pietermaritzburg and finish in Durban, with the Comrades alternating its start and finish point because, unlike the canoe marathon, it does not rely on gravity. The villages that the local and international athletes and media see and broadcast to the world look serene and the locals often cheer the athletes who run or paddle past their homes on their way to the finish line. It is a magnificent landscape, whose mesmerising views have featured in many postcards and anthropological studies for more than a century. The two rivers, the Umngeni and Umsunduzi, have for centuries been sources of life and economic sustenance to the precolonial and current inhabitants of these areas and to the cities that emerged during the nineteenth century, Durban and Pietermaritzburg. For the residents of these parts of KwaZulu-Natal, those rivers and rolling hills represent key markers of identity and belonging. The scene of the drama that took nearly 150 years to reach its tragic climax is an area on the western side of the Valley of a Thousand Hills, situated at the confluence of Mngeni and Msunduzi rivers, at the centre of which is a mountain called Table Mountain (not to be confused with the famous mountain in Cape Town). Jill Kelly's book, sub-titled Land, [End Page 161] violence and belonging in South Africa, 1800-1996, takes the reader on the meandering historical journey. Unlike some writers of the contemporary history and politics of Natal and the midlands region, Kelly has taken a longer-term view, locating the generational conflict of the 1990s within a historical context. The temptation over the years has been to reduce the conflict of the 1980s and 1990s to ideological contestation between the supporters of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the African National Congress (ANC).1 However, what Kelly has demonstrated is a much more complex picture, including the problematising of the words chiefs and inkosi in colonial, apartheid and post-apartheid contexts. Kelly's book is divided into three parts. Part 1 is preceded by the Introduction. Kelly does a sterling job of situating her study within a broader historical context and describing in detail the concept of ukukhonza in relation to chiefly authority, identity and belonging. Understanding the concept of ukukhonza, which cannot merely be defined as allegiance, is important because it carries a deeper meaning of a social contract between the chief and his subject. Ukukhonza, paid in the form of a fee, gives expectations of land and security on the part of the chief's subjects. Kelly uses ukukhonza 'as a lens to explore the history of the relationship between chiefs, subjects and land' (220). She introduces the readers to chief Mhlabunzima Maphumulo and goes into detail in respect of his relationship with his subjects and how his chiefdom and its authority had been undermined and denigrated by the neighbouring Nyavu based on the fact that the Nyavu claimed to be the original occupiers of the land by arguing that Mhlabunzima's great grandfather, Maguzu Maphumulo, was not a traditional chief but a minor headman who was rewarded with a piece of land by the colonial authorities for his loyalty to them. The names of the two chiefs, when translated figuratively, are illustrative of their difficult heritage, the trials and tribulations of their forebears. Mhlabunzima's name is about the hardships of the land while Bangubukhosi records the contestations for power in his chieftaincy. Part 1–'Violence, allegiance and authority in the making of kingdoms and colony'–has two chapters. This section delves into the heart of chiefly authority, identity formation, claims of originality and pre-colonial existence, and the fluidity...