The Great Bophuthatswana donkey massacre: Discourse on the ass and the politics of class and grass

American Historical Review

Volumn 106, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 485-506

  Jacobs, Nancy J ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0010627105     PISSN: 00028762     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2651615     Document Type: Article

References (143)

1. Officially, Kuruman is a town and a magisterial district. After 1970, the "Kuruman" district was limited to the town and white-owned farms, and the Tlhaping-Tlharo district of Bophuthatswana was created for black areas. Yet people still conceive of the region as "Kuruman" or "Kudumane" in Tswana.
2. I have found mention of this event in Carole Cooper, et al., Survey of Race Relations in South Africa, 1983 (Johannesburg, 1984), 376-77;
3. and Paul Starkey, ed., Animal Traction in South Africa: Empowering Rural Communities (Gauteng, S.A., 1995), 90, 143-44.
4. The only media reports I found were The Argus, June 23, 1983;
5. The Cape Times, June 24, 1983;
6. The Star, July 5, 1983;
7. City Press, September 18, 1983;
8. and Maleho Mosiamane, "What Lies Behind the Glittering Bophuthatswana Façade?" Pace (October 1983): 19-23.
9. The donkey killing is not mentioned in the exhaustive biography of a farmer in eastern Bophuthatswana, suggesting that even within the homeland, the event was localized. See Charles van Onselen, The Seed Is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, a South African Sharecropper, 1894-1985 (New York, 1996).
10. Frederick Cooper, "Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History," AHR 99 (December 1994): 1517.
11. For a recent discussion of these issues, see Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, N.J., 1996).
12. use the word "tribe" with reference to the institutions created by colonial governance. See essays in Leroy Vail, ed., The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Berkeley, Calif., 1989).
13. On the wilderness bias in environmental history, see William Cronon, "The Trouble with Wilderness, or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature," Environmental History 1 (1996): 8-28.
14. For an introduction to issues in African environmental history, see James Giblin and Gregory Maddox, "Introduction," in Custodians of the Land: Ecology and Culture in the History of Tanzania (Athens, Ohio, 1996), 1-14.
15. Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York, 1984).
16. See also Molly H. Mullin, "Mirrors and Windows: Sociocultural Studies of Human-Animal Relationships," Annual Review of Anthropology 28 (1999): 201-24.
17. Melissa Leach and Robin Mearns, eds., The Lie of the Land: Challenging Received Wisdom on the African Environment (London, 1996), 1-33.
18. My research assistants and interpreters were Kopano Chirwa, Steven Kotoloane, Bhangi Mosala, Kristin Russell, Kgomotso Tshetlho, and Megan Waples. I am deeply grateful to this research team, to Peter Heywood, and others who helped in this research, especially the people who talked to us. An open invitation was given for people to participate in group interviews, conducted both in English and Tswana with interpreters. Some groups were divided by gender; a large percentage of active participants were over fifty years old. We also interviewed individuals. Notes and transcripts are available in Nancy Jacobs, et al., "Interviews on the Environmental History of Kuruman," Moffat Mission Library, Kuruman. Group interviews are indexed by village name with alphabetical designators. Individual interviews are indexed by name of informant.
19. Kevin Shillington, The Colonisation of the Southern Tswana, 1870-1900 (Johannesburg, 1985).
20. M. W. Henning, Animal Diseases in South Africa, 2d edn. (Pretoria, 1949), on anthrax, see 3-13, on botulism, see 324-53;
21. H. T. B. Hall, Diseases and Parasites of Livestock in the Tropics (London, 1977), on anthrax, see 129-31, on botulism, see 131-33.
22. For the only historical discussion of bovine botulism in the rural economy, see P. H. R. Snyman, "Die Bydrae van Droogtes en Veesiektes tot die Verarming van die Landboubevolking in Noord-Kaapland," Tydskrif vir Geestewetenskappe 29 (1989): 32-49.
23. See articles in Leach and Mearns, Lie of the Land.
24. See also M. T. Hoffman and R. M. Cowling, "Vegetation Change in the Semi-arid Eastern Karoo over the Last 200 Years: An Expanding Karoo - Fact or Fiction?" South African Journal of Science 86 (1990): 86-294;
25. Mary Tiffen, Michael Mortimore, and Francis Gichuki, More People, Less Erosion: Environmental Recovery in Kenya (New York, 1994);
26. James Fairhead and Melissa Leach, Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic (Cambridge, 1996);
27. James McCann, "The Plow and the Forest: Narratives of Deforestation in Ethiopia, 1840-1992," Environmental History 2 (1997): 138-59.
28. Roy H. Behnke and Ian Scoones, "Rethinking Range Ecology: Implications for Rangeland Management in Africa," in Range Ecology at Disequilibrium: New Models of Natural Variability and Pastoral Adaptation in African Savannas, Behnke, Scoones, and Carol Kerven, eds. (London, 1993), 1-30.
29. On the history of bush encroachment in Kuruman, see Nancy Jacobs, "Grasslands and Thickets: Bush Encroachment and Herding in the Kalahari Thornveld," Environment and History 6 (2000): 289-316.
30. This is a reference to animals dying of thirst during the drought of 1932. Humphrey C. Thompson, Distant Horizons: An Autobiography of One Man's Forty Years of Missionary Service in and around Kuruman, South Africa (Kimberley, 1976), 65.
31. On domestication, see Juliet Clutton-Brock, Horse Power: A History of the Horse and the Donkey in Human Societies (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 62-66.
32. Interview with Peace Mabilo, October 15, 1998, Moffat Mission Library, Kuruman.
33. Suzanne Vetter, "Investigating the Impact of Donkeys on a Communal Range in Namaqualand: How Much Does a Donkey 'Cost' in Goat Units?" (Honors thesis, University of Cape Town, 1996);
34. Montague Demment and Peter Van Soest, "A Nutritional Explanation for Body-Size Patterns of Ruminant and Nonruminant Herbivores," American Naturalist 125 (1985): 641-72.
35. Mora Dickson, Beloved Partner, Mary Moffat of Kuruman: A Biography Based on Her Letters ([Gaborone and Kuruman], 1974), 189.
36. Cape Parliamentary Papers G. 36 1907, Blue Book for Native Affairs, 1906, 29;
37. Union Government Publication U. 17, Blue Book for Native Affairs, 1911, 160;
38. U.G. 32-1912, Census of the Union of South Africa.
39. On donkeys in mining, see Anthony Hocking, Kaias and Cocopans: The Story of Mining in South Africa's Northern Cape (Johannesburg, 1983), esp. 52-54, 81.
40. U.G. 12-1932, Agricultural Census, No. 13, 1930. Early census data is unreliable, particularly for African reserves. For some years, there is a discrepancy of 20-30 percent between the published census reports and data in archival records. Therefore, I am using these numbers advisedly, only to illustrate broad, long-term trends.
41. P. H. R. Snyman, Kuruman: Vervloë Pad na Afrika (Pretoria, 1991), 114, 120, 146.
42. On mechanization of cultivation on white farms at this time, see van Onselen, Seed Is Mine, 276-78.
43. U.G. 77-1948, Agricultural Census No. 20, 1945-46;
44. Special Report Series Nos. 1-24, Agricultural Census No. 24, 1949-50;
45. R. 10 '64, Agricultural Census No. 34, 1959-60 (livestock).
46. See Charles Simkins, "Agricultural Production in the African Reserves of South Africa, 1918-1969," Journal of Southern African Studies 8 (1981): 267-68. Simkins estimates that people on Kuruman reserves produced less than 25 percent of their subsistence requirements between 1927 and 1960.
47. The following discussion of the usefulness of donkeys is drawn from my fieldwork. See also van Onselen, Seed Is Mine, 137, 141, 323;
48. and Peta A. Jones, Donkeys for Development (Harare, Zimbabwe, 1997).
49. On wood sales, see Shillington, Colonisation of the Southern Tswana, 102-06, 137-38.
50. Homer Shantz Collection, Special Collections in the Main Library, University of Arizona, Tucson. I am grateful to Barry Morton for visiting this collection. For photographs of donkey teams, see 248, 259.
51. National Archives Repository, Pretoria (hereafter, NAR), Native Affairs Series (hereafter, NTS) 6577 918/327, October 23, 1953. Interview with Olebile Mabahanyane, October 23, 1997; interview G at Batlharos, October 26, 1997; interview F at Ncweng, October 27, 1997, Moffat Mission Library.
52. NAR NTS 7351 176/327, June 1936. On seasonal labor in the harvest, see P.-L. Breutz, The Tribes of the Kuruman and Postmasburg District, Republic of South Africa, Department of Bantu Administration and Development Ethnological Publications, no. 49 (Pretoria, 1963), 63.
53. Michael De Klerk, "Seasons That Will Never Return: The Impact of Farm Mechanization on Employment, Incomes and Population Distribution in the Western Transvaal," Journal of Southern African Studies 11 (1984): 84-105.
54. Cape Town Archives Repository (hereafter, CTAR), 2/KMN, Kuruman Native Affairs Commissioner Correspondence Series, 39 N 5/1/2, part 2, January 26, 1950, and CTAR, 2/KMN, 20 N 1/15/4, part 1, March 29, 1950. Interview F at Ncweng, October 27, 1997, Moffat Mission Library.
55. See Leach and Mearns, "Introduction," in Lie of the Land, 8-9.
56. CTAR, 2/KMN, 48 N 8/5/2, part 1, June 30, 1947.
57. NAR, NTS 9352 19/380, August 24, 1932.
58. CTAR, 1/KMN, Kuruman Magistrate Correspondence Series, 13/43 N 9/15/3(2). See correspondence in this file from late 1944 and early 1945.
59. On the politics and sociological effects of Betterment, see Joanne Yawitch, Betterment: The Myth of Homeland Agriculture (Johannesburg, 1981);
60. C. J. De Wet, Moving Together, Drifting Apart: Betterment Planning and Villagisation in a South African Homeland (Johannesburg, 1995).
61. On communal tenure, see Martin Chanock, "Shaping the Imperial Legal Regime: A Review of the Customary Law of Tenure," in Kristin Mann and Richard Roberts, eds., Law in Colonial Africa (Portsmouth, 1991), 62-84;
62. and Mamdani, Citizen and Subject, 138-41.
63. CTAR, 2/KMN, 20 N 1/15/4, part 1, minutes of meeting, July 27, 1949; NAR, NTS 6577 918/327, October 23, 1953, March 13, 1956; Breutz, Tribes of the Kuruman, 66.
64. The donkey limitation proclamation was CTAR, 2/KMN, 48 8/5/2 256 of February 6, 1953. On stock reduction, see correspondence in this file. The numbers of culled animals were given in part 1, a report dated October 23, 1953.
65. Ivan Thomas Evans, Bureaucracy and Race: Native Administration in South Africa (Berkeley, Calif., 1997), 9-13, 164-76, 282-83.
66. CTAR, 2/KMN, 20 N 1/15/4, part 4, minutes of meetings, July 1, 1959, March 29, 1966, March 23, 1967, June 29, 1967, March 28, 1968, June 27, 1968, September 26, 1968.
67. CTAR, 2/KMN, 20 N 1/15/4, part 4, minutes of meeting, June 29, 1967. Starkey claims that voluntary selling was also unsuccessful in Kwa-Zulu. See Animal Traction in South Africa, 22.
68. U.G. 77-1948, Agricultural Census No. 20, 1945-46.
69. CTAR, 2/KMN, 20 N 1/15/4, part 2, September 25, 1953.
70. CTAR, 2/KMN, 20 N 1/15/4, part 2, minutes of meetings, May 28, 1951, and September 19, 1952. See also CTAR, 2/KMN, 20 N 1/15/4, part 1, April 13, 1943.
71. See Vetter, "Investigating the Impact of Donkeys ";
72. and Starkey, Animal Traction in South Africa, 142.
73. On the apartheid policy of segregated administration, see Mamdani, Citizen and Subject;
74. Deborah Posel, The Making of Apartheid 1948-1961: Conflict and Compromise (Oxford, 1991);
75. Paul B. Rich, State Power and Black Politics in South Africa, 1912-51 (New York, 1996);
76. and Evans, Bureaucracy and Race.
77. Tribal and regional authorities in this area were created by Government Notice 806 of 1955, Government Notice 1932 of 1956, and Government Notice 358 of March 7, 1958. Breutz, Tribes of the Kuruman, 10, 102, 170.
78. On their responsibilities, see Jeffrey Butler, Robert I. Rotberg, and John Adams, The Black Homelands of South Africa: The Political and Economic Development of Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu (Berkeley, Calif., 1977), 28, 33-34, 157-78.
79. On the Bophuthatswana bureaucracy, see D. A. Kotze, Bibliography of Official Publications of the Black South African Homelands, 2d edn. (Pretoria, 1983), xvi-xvii.
80. Butler, Rotberg, and Adams, Black Homelands of South Africa, 36-37, 50-55;
81. John Seiler, "Bophuthatswana: A State of Politics," in Transforming Mangope's Bophuthatswana, Seiler, ed.,
82. electronic publication by Daily Mail and Guardian, 1999, on the World Wide Web at www.mg.co.za/ mg/projects/bop/ch_one.html.
83. Daily Mail and Guardian, July 24, 1998, http://web.sn.apc.org/wmail/issues/980724/NEWS19.html;
84. John Seiler, "The North West Province from 1996 to 1999," in Transforming Mangope's Bophuthatswana, www.mg.co.za/mg/projects/bop/update.html.
85. See also Michael Lawrence and Andrew Manson, "The Dog of the Boers: The Rise and Fall of Mangope in Bophuthatswana," Journal of Southern African Studies 20 (1994): 447-61. The rand suffered serious devaluation between the foundation of Bophuthatswana and 1998, but it averaged around 3 or 4 to the dollar.
86. On auctions, see NAR, Commissioner General Mafeking (hereafter, KGM), 35 4/2/4/8, minutes of regional authority meetings in 1974 and 1975. On land, see Seiler, "Bophuthatswana: A State of Politics";
87. and interview with W. J. Seremane, July 31, 1998, Moffat Mission Library. On the BIC, see Butler, Rotberg, and Adams, Black Homelands of South Africa, 179-218;
88. Bophuthatswana Department of Agriculture and Forestry, Annual Report, 1973, 12,
89. Annual Report, 1976, 41.
90. Loraine Gordon, et al., Survey of Race Relations in South Africa, 1978 (Johannesburg, 1979), 307;
91. Gordon, et al., Survey of Race Relations in South Africa, 1980 (Johannesburg, 1981), 433;
92. Peter Randall, et al., Survey of Race Relations in South Africa, 1982 (Johannesburg, 1983), 416;
93. C. Cooper, Survey of Race Relations, 1983, 376.
94. Agricor, Annual Report, 1985-86, 4.
95. On planning land use for "middle-class farmers," see Gordon, Survey of Race Relations, 1978, 432-33.
96. Statistics on cattle and donkeys in the Tlhaping-TIharo district are from Bophuthatswana Department of Agriculture and Forestry Annual Reports, 1972-1988. The Tlhaping-Tlharo district included communal areas previously in the Kuruman and Vryburg districts, and therefore these statistics cannot be correlated with pre-1970 data for the Kuruman district.
97. NAR, KGM, 39 5/4/6, minutes of meetings, July 14, 1977, and September 8, 1977. Donkeys were debated in the National Assembly in 1981 but not in 1982. See Republic of Bophuthatswana, Debates of the Fourth Session of the First National Assembly, May 6, 1981-June 17, 1981, 1: 368-412;
98. and Debates of the Fifth Session of the First Bophuthatswana National Assembly, April 27, 1982-June 9, 1982.
99. On control efforts before 1983, see also Debates of the First Session of the Second Bophuthatswana National Assembly, June 16-July 28, 1983, 2: 773, 783.
100. Debates of the First Session of the Second Bophuthatswana National Assembly (1983), 2: 743-49.
101. Interview with W. J. Seremane, Moffat Mission Library. In 1998, Mr. Seremane was the chief land claims commissioner for the Commission of Restitution of Land Rights. On donkeys as a traffic hazard, see the Debates of the Fourth Session of the First National Assembly (1981), 1: 379, 386, 398.
102. In the course of my research, I learned of a white South African Defence Force soldier who participated in the donkey killing, but I was not able to interview him.
103. The interviews on the donkey killings were F at Kagung, July 21, 1998; G at Kagung, July 21, 1998; J at Ga-Mopedi, July 23, 1998; K at Ga-Mopedi, July 23, 1998; K at Ncweng, July 24, 1998; L at Ncweng, July 24, 1998; C at Seodin, July 27, 1998; D at Seodin, July 27, 1998.
104. Interview C at Seodin; and with Gert Olivier, September 28, 1991. Personal communication to the author from Alan Butler, May 19, 1998.
105. Interview with Agisanang David Setlhodi, July 27, 1998. On abuses of the Bophuthatswana police, see Colin Murray, Black Mountain: Land, Class and Power in the Eastern Orange Free State, 1880s to 1980s (Washington, D.C., 1992), 221-27.
106. Interview L at Ncweng.
107. Interview C at Seodin.
108. Interview L at Ncweng; interview J at Ga-Mopedi.
109. Interview C at Seodin.
110. Interview L at Ncweng.
111. Randall, Survey of Race Relations, 1982, 376.
112. Interview J at Ga-Mopedi.
113. Interview with W. J. Seremane.
114. Bophuthatswana Department of Agriculture and Forestry, Annual Report, 1982;
115. Annual Report, 1983.
116. NAR, NTS 3007 368/305, memorandum, n.d. [probably October 1937].
117. NAR, NTS 1948 256/278 (3), October 13, 1938.
118. NAR, NTS 7387 305/327, Deputy Director of Native Agriculture Trip Report no. 44, Western Areas (Winter 1950).
119. Debates of the Fourth Session of the First National Assembly (1981), 1: 391, 401;
120. Debates of the First Session of the Second Bophuthatswana National Assembly (1983), 2: 750-99.
121. Interview C at Seodin.
122. Debates of the First Session of the Second Bophuthatswana National Assembly (1983), 2: 770-71.
123. Interview D at Seodin.
124. Interview L at Ncweng.
125. Interview C at Seodin.
126. Interview C at Seodin.
127. Interview C at Seodin.
128. Interview L at Ncweng.
129. Interview C at Seodin. On Christianity among southern Tswana people, see Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, Vol. 1: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago, 1991);
130. Vol. 2: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier (Chicago, 1997).
131. Debates of the Fourth Session of the First National Assembly (1981), 1: 401.
132. Interview C at Seodin.
133. Mosiamane, "What Lies Behind the Glittering Bophuthatswana Façade," 19-23.
134. Telephone interview by the author with Blondie Makhene, November 27, 1998. I thank Angela Impey for locating Mr. Makhene for me.
135. Interview C at Seodin.
136. Interview L at Ncweng.
137. On the 1999 election in North-West Province, see Andrew Reynolds, ed., Election '99 South Africa: From Mandela to Mbeki (New York, 1999), 134-36, 189, 194. I thank John Seiler for the Kuruman voting results. Information was also available on the Independent Electoral Commission web site: www.elections.org.za.
138. This challenge is similar to those faced - and often overcome - by historians, such as those of the Subaltern Studies group, who have worked on restoring to history the experiences of underprivileged people. To frame the situation in an admittedly provocative way, it may be useful to think of domesticated animals as especially disadvantaged subaltern subjects. This would require us to view the donkey massacre as an act of injustice against not only the owners but also the animals themselves.
139. Starkey, Animal Traction in South Africa, 21-22, 139-51.
140. On the material and cultural value of donkeys for white South Africans, see Brian du Toit, People of the Valley: Life in an Isolated Afrikaner Community in South Africa (Cape Town, 1974), 36, 45-46, 75-77.
141. On the donkey monuments, see photographs in James Walton, A Tribute to the Donkey (n.p., 1999), 24-25;
142. and Starkey, Animal Traction in South Africa, color photograph insert, 4.
143. There is also a donkey statue in Brazil; see Frank Brookshier, The Burro (Norman, Okla., 1974), 223.