120 Years in 120 Objects
Join the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in celebrating the museum’s 120th year of orbiting the sun. Staff and guest curators have chosen one object or item per year of our existence to highlight to the public. Visit the website and our social media platforms regularly to see the latest object and keep an eye out for information about a physical exhibition later this year!
Today’s Object is from 1922
Fuze’s Gourd by Justine Wintjes, Curator of Anthropology
In 1922 Magema Magwaza Fuze published Abantu Abamnyama in Pietermaritzburg, which was the first book-length publication in Zulu by a Zulu-speaker. Fuze died later that year and the book marked the culmination of a long life of thinking and writing.
Hlonipha Mokoena recently described Fuze as one of the ‘treasures of African intellectual history’. His body of work has regained significance in contemporary times for the ways it brings aspects of isiZulu life in the past into the present.
‘Magema de Fuza’ donated a beer gourd to the Museum in 1904, the year it opened to the public. In doing so, Fuze was actively participating in the creation of the modern world.
This gourd was once used for utshwala (beer). Neat stitches of plant fibre bind its cracks together and streaks of utshwala mark its outer surface.
Fuze’s legacy as a philosopher and historian lives on in his published works, and in his beer vessel.
Magema Fuze (Campbell Collections of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, File 2 of the Fuze papers, KCB1127)
Fuze’s gourd is on display in the upper galleries of the Museum.
