Fuze’s Gourd Installation discussed in International Seminar

At a seminar hosted by the Research Centre for Material Culture in the Netherlands and held on the 7^th March 2023, Professor Carolyn Hamilton of the Archive and Public Culture Initiative (University of Cape Town) and a frequent research partner of the KwaZulu-Natal Museum, gave a presentation titled Refigurings of archives and epistemological futures. Part of the presentation touched on the recent installation of the beer gourd donated by Magema Fuze to the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in 1904.

The gourd, which for many years was in storage, was installed on exhibition again in late 2022 as part of the re-publication of Fuze’s book, Abantu Abamnyama by the University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. The installation was overseen by Dr Justine Wintjes, Curator of Anthropology in the KwaZulu-Natal Museum’s Department of Human Sciences. Professor Hamilton noted that the exhibition challenged older modes of museum representation still evident in the older exhibits of the museum that surround the exhibit and allowed for new questions to be formulated regarding the organization and meaning of the material archive within the museum’s collections. You can learn more about Fuze’s Gourd by visiting the Africa Gallery at the KwaZulu-Natal Museum.

The installation of Fuze’s Gourd is on exhibit in the Africa Galleries of the KwaZulu-Natal Museum (Photo: G. Blundell).

New Collaborative Research between Members of the Khoesan Community and Scholars at the KwaZulu-Natal Museum Published

A paper entitled ‘Mijnheer Lochenberg’: on the construction of Khoesan as a criminal class has just been published in the journal Southern African Humanities. The paper is the result of a four-year long collaboration between Troy Meyers, a member of the Khoesan community, Angela Ferreira of the University of Cape Town’s Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative, and Dr Geoff Blundell, the head of the Human Sciences Department at the KwaZulu-Natal Museum.

The paper traces the history of the Lochenberg family in the nineteenth century, beginning with  Nicolaas Lochenberg, a Dutch colonist who rejected colonialism and partnered with a Khoe woman, Sarah, and who lived in Xhosaland as a translator and advisor to the paramount Gcaleka chief, Hintsa, for almost 30 years. Nicolaas and Sarah raised several children, two of which went on to play significant roles in the history of south-eastern South Africa—Willem and Hans. Willem was a catechist for the Wesleyan Missionary Society and served at several mission stations throughout the Trans-Kei region. Hans was a powerful chief who amassed a following of over 1,000 men and to whom sections of the Mpondomise, Bhaca and various San communities pledged their allegiance. He orchestrated resistance to colonialism and was a significant interlocutor in south-eastern South Africa. Despite this, historians and archaeologists have simply dismissed both Nicolaas and Hans as minor cattle-rustlers. Part of the problem lies in sloppy research that confused Nicolaas with his cousin; other issues with this portrayal stem from the uncritical adoption of colonial tropes that portrayed everyone who was not part of the colony or a member of a tribe as criminal.

The paper is the first in what is hoped will be a long collaboration between scholars at the KwaZulu-Natal Museum and the Khoesan community that will focus on restitutive histories that expose persistent, problematic scholarly treatment of the past.

 Troy Meyers: co-author and descendant of Nicolaas Lochenberg

Recent book donations to the KwaZulu-Natal Museum Library!

Our warmest thanks go to recent donors of art, history, and archaeology books to the KwaZulu-Natal Museum Library:

Julia Charlton of Wits Art Museum for thirteen of their exhibition catalogues, including Activate/Captivate: collections re-engagement at Wits Art Museum (edited by Laura De Becker and Anitra Nettleton, 2015) and A long way home: migrant worker worlds 1800–2014 (edited by Peter Delius, Laura Phillips and Fiona Rankin-Smith, 2015)

Carolyn Hamilton of the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative, University of Cape Town, for two copies of the double-volume box set of Tribing and untribing the archive (edited by Hamilton and Nessa Leibhammer, 2016)

Tšhegofatšo Mabaso of the Iziko South African National Gallery for the exhibition catalogue Not the usual suspects (Iziko South African Museums and Ingrid Masondo, 2020)

Elizabeth Perrill for her book Burnished: Zulu ceramics between rural and urban South Africa (2022)

Andrzej Rozwadowski for his book Visual culture, heritage and identity: using rock art to reconnect past and present (with Jamie Hampson, 2021)

Jill Weintroub for a copy of the book Dress as social relations: an interpretation of Bushman dress (Vibeke M. Viestad, 2018)

We salute you for these wonderful contributions to our book holdings.