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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | So Who Was Elias Kuzwayo? Nationalism, Collaboration and the Picaresque in Natal |
Author: | La Hausse, Paul |
Year: | 1992 |
Periodical: | Cahiers d'études africaines |
Volume: | 32 |
Issue: | 127 |
Pages: | 469-507 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | South Africa Natal |
Subjects: | Zulu politicians biographies (form) History and Exploration nationalism Ethnic and Race Relations Politics and Government |
About person: | Ellen Kate Kuzwayo (1914-2006) |
External link: | https://doi.org/10.3406/cea.1992.1545 |
Abstract: | The starting point of this article is an exploration of the fragmented record of the life of Elias Kuzwayo, a petty criminal, failed populist and confidence trickster, born in the late nineteenth century in the hinterland of Pietermaritzburg, Natal, in South Africa. The article suggests that the idea of the 'picaresque', explored in both literary criticism and symbolic anthropology, when provided with sufficient historical content may help to illuminate some of the central features of Kuzwayo's career and serve to identify other historical figures like him. It is argued that Kuzwayo's career represents a vivid example of a picaresque elaboration of the broad terrain of ambiguity and structural contradiction occupied by members of Natal's fractured African 'middle classes'. Viewed through the lens of the picaresque, Kuzwayo's career serves to raise questions about the emergence of certain styles of African political leadership and the sources of political authority during a period of massive social and economic transformation. It also illuminates particular kinds of collaboration engaged in by Zulu intellectuals with the apartheid State after 1948. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in French (p. 536). |