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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:'Colonial' experts, local interlocutors, informants and the making of an archive on the 'Transvaal Ndebele', 1930-1989
Author:Lekgoathi, Sekibakiba PeterISNI
Year:2009
Periodical:The Journal of African History
Volume:50
Issue:1
Pages:61-80
Language:English
Geographic terms:South Africa
Transvaal
Subjects:Ndebele (South Africa)
ethnic identity
ethnic classification
anthropology
archives
About person:Nicolaas Jacobus Van Warmelo (1904-1989)ISNI
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/40206698
Abstract:The perspectives of African informants and researchers profoundly shaped the writings of government ethnologist Nicholas Jacobus van Warmelo who not only collected information from local African informants but also relied on African researchers who wrote manuscripts in the vernacular that would constitute part of his archive. Van Warmelo was employed by the South African Native Affairs Department from 1930 to 1969 to identify and fix 'tribes', a highly political enterprise, and in the process generated an archive. His work was as much appropriated by the apartheid State for social engineering as by Ndebele interlocutors involved in contemporary struggles over chieftainship. This article explores the process of producing knowledge on the 'Transvaal Ndebele', and provides an analysis of Van Warmelo's texts and of his researchers' manuscripts. By looking at the role of local interlocutors, the author makes a case for African agency in shaping the 'colonial' expert's conceptions of Ndebele identity. It thus provides an account of the co-production of cultural knowledge. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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