This image gelled nicely with pre-existing stereotypes of African savagery. Isaacs' account compares Shaka to the barbarian ruler Attila the Hun, but unsupported by any solid evidence. Despite being well treated by Shaka, they later colluded to portray him as a demonic mass-murderer to cover their own dodgy activities, stealing ivory, taking local "harems", smuggling guns and possibly even slaves. The first white eyewitnesses were small-scale traders and adventurers Nathaniel Isaacs and Henry Francis Fynn. Most can be broadly lumped under "monster" and "heroic genius". What myths have shaped his image in popular discourse? And third, that no professional scholar had attempted a full-scale biography of Shaka solidly based on available historical evidence. Second, that such inventions were driven by much wider aesthetic, social or political currents - and are difficult to erase from popular consciousness. First, that a great deal of what had passed as factual and accepted "history" was actually pure fiction. This over-simplified stereotype of Africans being prone to unbridled violence has fed into the ongoing Zulu self-conception as a fundamentally "warrior nation." My study was published as Savage Delight, an investigation of how long-entrenched European images of "savagery" were applied to Shaka to support the ideologies of colonisation and apartheid. These ranged from the earliest monstrous depictions of the mid-1800s, through sundry novels, poems and illustrations to the notoriously ahistorical 1986 TV series Shaka Zulu (in which African spirituality is reduced to screeching Gothic light shows and Shaka is a snarling killing machine). I began writing a PhD study of the numerous white images of Shaka. In my view, the unity of this state, the level of violence employed to achieve it, and Shaka's responsibility for knock-on violence further inland have been hugely exaggerated.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |