Anatomy of a South African Genocide

Guide to Further Reading

Guide to further reading It is gratifying that the last decade and a half has witnessed the emergence of a growing body of scholarly work on the colonial experience of the Cape San peoples. Shula Marks’s pioneering ‘Khoisan resistance’ still provides a serviceable overview of the subject while Smith et al’s Bushmen of Southern Africa, especially the middle section that deals with the colonial period, functions as a useful introduction to key themes covered here. Though aimed at a popular readership the book is based on scholarly research. The two most detailed studies of San–settler conflict, both on the eighteenth century, complement each other. Newton-King’s Masters and Servants focuses largely on the northeastern frontier while Nigel Penn’s The Forgotten Frontier deals with the northern frontier zone. Both are erudite, extensively researched texts that should serve as the first ports of call for readers seeking greater detail about the events and social processes analysed in this volume. P.J. van der Merwe’s Noordwaardse Beweging is surprisingly informative and even-handed regarding the frontier conflict, particularly for a book that emanated from the University of Stellenbosch in the 1930s, then a bastion of Afrikaner nationalism and white supremacist thinking. Various contributors to Pippa Skotnes’s edited volumes, particularly Miscast, elucidate important aspects of the topic. Although it has little to say about the San, The Shaping of South African Society furnishes indispensable context. The chapters by Guelke, as well as Elphick and Malherbe, are particularly useful, as are the earlier chapters of Giliomee’s The Afrikaners, Mostert’s Frontiers and Marais’s The Cape Coloured People. Our knowledge of the destruction of Cape San societies during the nineteenth century is patchy because little research has been done in this area. Szalay’s The San and the Colonization of the Cape provides useful insight into developments on the northeastern frontier, though his overall analysis is flawed. Dennis Neville’s Master’s thesis has rich detail on the fate of San communities of the Seekoei River valley from thelateeighteenththroughuntilthelatenineteenthcentury.Theworks by Findlay and Strauss, though narrowly focused, provide important glimpses into the final stages of the annihilation of /Xam societies. The anatomy of a South African genocide 98 Nigel Penn is extending his research on the northern Cape into the nineteenth century, and a comparative study with Australia is in the making. Also, Pippa Skotnes has started a project on Louis Anthing, whichissuretoshednewlightontheclosingstagesoftheextermination of the /Xam. McDonald’s Master’s thesis contains copious information on LMS missions to the San, as well as their adaptation to colonial rule during the earlier decades of the nineteenth century. The articles by Karel Schoeman contain much detail on LMS missions to the San. Bushman Raiders of the Drakensberg by John Wright documents the destruction of San societies in Natal, allowing for some comparison with Cape San experience. Nothwithstanding its intention to counter the claims ofgovernment critics, such as John Philip and other humanitarians, Moodie’s collection of translated archival documents is edifying, particularly on the nature of frontier conflict in the 1770s. Travel accounts of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are extremely useful for gaining some sense of daily life at the Cape and settler attitudes toward the San, while Theal’s Records of the Cape Colony contains a number of relevant documents. Finally, I found Hugh Brody’s The Other Side of Eden—part memoir, part learned but passionate disquisition on the nature of hunter-gatherer society—both moving and enlightening. ...