"We Spend Our Years as a Tale That Is Told": Oral Historical Narrative in a South African Chiefdom (review)

In this work with its wonderfully apt title, Isabel Hofmeyr reports on her study of oral historical narrative in a black chiefdom situated near the small town of Potgietersrust, in what is today the Northern Province in South Africa—a community that has been radically changed by colonial and capitalist influences. Major themes that Hofmeyr explores are: how oral literary forms are inductively and informally learned, how to understand oral historical narratives as a literary form, the political impact of literate institutions on rural society, and, very important, the development of some of the manifold intellectual traditions in South African communities. She focuses in particular on the various representations of a specific episode of intense conflict between black and white in this area during October and November of 1854—the siege of the cave of Gwasa (Makapan). Three related issues are examined in detail: oral storytelling, the politics of literacy and its complex influence on an oral culture, and the multifaceted dimensions of historical narrative.

The scholarly nature of the work and its absolute adherence to principled and wide ranging research are very evident. Hofmeyr sets out her aims, methods, theoretical base, and procedures in a clear and convincing manner; the appendices containing examples of published texts as well as the core interviews, the interesting photographs, and the copious, enlightening notes contribute to this effect. My main impression, however, was of an immensely readable tale: the historical context is evoked in a gripping way, the spokespeople humorously but respectfully portrayed. Her analyses of what may be central issues to her study I experienced as original and convincing. She, for instance, proposes “gender to be the decisive division in storytelling” (6) and continues to argue and demonstrate that the traditional boundaries between male and female narrative genres were rooted in a cultural sense of gendered space that became blurred because of modern historical events: migrancy, missionaries, apartheid’s removals and resettlements. As interesting are her ideas on the influence of nineteenth-century fencing as a “textual” sign in opposition to the ancient oral agreements on boundaries and notions of possession (ch. 3: “‘The Spoken Word and the Barbed Wire’—Oral Chiefdoms versus Literature Bureaucracies,” 59–77). Her proposal that the (once overpowering, but now wavering) desire to uphold and protect the power of chieftaincy directs the themes, style, content, and impact of these historical narratives causes one to reflect and rethink one’s own earlier convictions. What I found especially fascinating was how Hofmeyr included versions of the Siege and its fatal aftermath (one white farmer/general and thousands of black fugitives died) from the perspective of (also mainly oral) reports by the white community. The mention of even Mark Twain’s ironic comments on this particular example of “colonial genocide” (143–44) adds to the impression of how widespread the transference of these narratives and their transformation into myths, legends, and even monuments became.

Like some of the other publications in the series “Social History of Africa” (edited by Allen Isaacman and Jean Hay), this book displays a riveting intertwining of historical, sociopolitical, cultural, and literary concerns. When Hofmeyr states in her conclusion that “involvement with oral literature quite literally forces scholars to lift their eyes from the page [. . .] to confront context as a very material reality, [to] also confront [. . .] anew the complex links that unite producer, text, audience and the world in which they exist” (181), she emphasizes an insight that, to my mind, is fundamental in all writing, reading, and discussing of any kind of literature in South Africa today.