White Chief, Black Lords: Shepstone and the Colonial State in Natal, South Africa, 1845–1878 (review)

The second chapter of Thomas V. McClendon’s White Chief, Black Lords is called “The Man Who Would be Inkosi.” The classic Rudyard Kipling story that this chapter title is playing on is about the dangers that European adventurers court when they appropriate and manipulate another society’s institutions of power and legitimacy. The official at the heart of McClendon’s book, Theophilus Shepstone, made a career for himself in Natal doing just that, from the period before Natal was officially a British territory in the 1840s until his version of indirect rule seemed to be enshrined there with the codification of customary law in the 1870s. McClendon argues that previous analyses of Shepstone as an early icon of indirect rule have failed to take in his entire career path and to place his actions within the context of an ever-evolving colonial landscape. Shepstone’s methods were as much a product of African cultural realities and the pressures of African politics as they were the canny imposition of British colonial policies. As with Kipling’s protagonists, Shepstone was not always in control of the ways in which British power was translated by the amakhosi, the indigenous leaders further empowered by the British state. He didn’t have the freedom to reject their worldview, nor could he control the ways in which Africans interpreted his actions or those of his agents.

McClendon writes neither a biography of Shepstone nor a history of Natal. He uses particular moments from Shepstone’s career to illustrate the contingent nature of indirect rule as a method of colonial governance. McClendon situates his efforts alongside previous studies, including those by Jeff Guy and Michael R. Mahoney on Natal and Shepstone in particular, and by Mahmood Mamdani, Tom Young, and Karen E. Fields on indirect rule in general. In the late 1840s and early 1850s, Shepstone actually proposed the creation of reserves where the African population would be directly ruled by British officers. McClendon argues that Shepstone and others saw education, Christianization, and total white control over economic development as interconnected rather than contradictory goals. There was no government support forthcoming, however, so Shepstone was pushed by circumstances to capitalize on his understanding of local customs and the intricate relationships between indigenous leaders—resulting in the system that came to bear his name—in order to maintain some form of effective rule with very little money or staff.

The heart of the book and the strength of McClendon’s argument are the chapters devoted to witchcraft and the traditional practices marking amakhosi prerogatives of power, including the “eating up” of vanquished foes’ goods and lands (63). In these chapters, McClendon successfully demonstrates the ways in which Shepstone worked within cultural practices to reinforce his own authority, while also being caught up by those practices in ways that limited his ability to act and react to the demands of various other interest groups in Natal. McClendon dissects a witchcraft case handled by Shepstone to illustrate that indirect or “limited” rule demanded the appropriation of African discourses of power and in the process was forced to legitimize them (7). The local ruler, his enemies, the missionary staff, and the government all argued about whether the practice of witchcraft and the method by which a witch was identified and punished were appropriate moments for state intervention. In order to shore up the authority of the local leader and his demands for customary retribution against the practitioner, Shepstone had to acknowledge the validity of the initial premise: that witchcraft had been practiced. Doing so, argues McClendon, undermined British authority and legitimized institutions that the civilizing mission was supposed to be eradicating. It was, as McClendon says, a “delicate dance” (51). The government’s confiscation of lands and cattle from appointed chiefs who refused to acknowledge the authority of local magistrates was similarly a moment when...