Killie Campbell Lecture Explores the Life and Times of the First IsiZulu Author, Magema Fuze

Killie Campbell Lecture Explores the Life and Times of the First IsiZulu Author, Magema Fuze

Obscurity – The Life and Times of Magema Fuze, was the title of the Dr Killie Campbell Memorial Lecture which was hosted virtually in collaboration with UKZN and the Campbell Collection.

The lecture, which commemorates the life of Dr Killie Campbell – a collector, historian, activist, and heritage practitioner – annually during Heritage Month aims to discuss the comprehensive collection of books, manuscripts and photographs on the history of the south east African region and its population which are housed in the Killie Campbell Africana Library.

Facilitated by Mr Mwelela Cele, the Deputy Head of Research and Innovation at Amafa Heritage and Research Institute, the lecture featured guest speaker, Associate Professor and Researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand’s Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER), Hlonipha Mokoena who is also the author of Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual, a biography published by UKZN Press.

Mokoena defined obscurity as the one characteristic of Magema Fuze, the author of Abantu Abamnyama Lapa Bavela Ngakona (1922), and the first isiZulu speaker to publish a book in the isiZulu language ‘as little else is known about who he was and how he became a writer’.

Commenting on the translated version of Magema Fuze’s book, The Black People and Whence They Came (1979) which has become the standard, classical reference for historians working on the history of the Zulu people, she said, ‘Paradoxically, the other aspect of this book is its attempt to map the migratory roots of the African people on the continent, its ethnography of Black Africa and its self-conscientious address to posterity which are only mentioned in passing or dismissed as “idiosyncratic”.’

Highlighting Magema Fuze’s life, who was born on the south-side of the Tugela River known as the Colony of Natal and spent his childhood on Bishopstowe, near Pietermaritzburg, she recalls how as a Christian convert that had attended a mission school learning how to read and write, Magema Fuze had started his writing career in 1859 at the age of 14 with Amazwi Abantu which focussed on him learning how to type in isiZulu, going on to publish his book at the end of his life. A travel writer and trained printer, Mokoena noted some of Magema Fuze’s expeditions to the Kingdom of the Zulu nation which involved visiting Zulu Kings, Mpande and Cetshwayo.

Reviewing various scholars in her attempt to treat Magema Fuze as an author not limited by race and ethnicity, Mokoena quoted Marshall McLuhan’s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), which states that ‘print in turning the vernaculars into mass media…created the uniform centralising forces of modern nationalism.’ She said this quote had allowed her to see Magema Fuze ‘as a nationalist that was creating a nation out of words, a nation that was Black, African and Zulu.’

Mokoena also examined Walter Benjamin’s, Illuminations (1968) which rendered a translation as difficult, new and never the original text known as an “afterlife of a text”. She said this had allowed her to fill in the gaps between Magema Fuze’s writing and the translated version of the text, The Black People and Whence They Came, while Nadine Gordiner’s, The Essential Gesture (1988) had granted Mokoena the power to imagine Magema Fuze as a revolutionary.

In the Q&A session, Mokoena went on to discuss how her research had allowed her to discover Magema Fuze as one of the first Black artists trained in Western ways. Touching on how amaHlubi, a clan that had their own dialect of the isiZulu language, had always been recognised by the Zulu tribe, she commented on some of the ethical dilemmas of her research which included being unable to trace Magema Fuze’s family and/ or descendants who had changed their surname to Ngcobo – one of the clan names of Fuze.

In her vote of thanks, UKZN’s Portfolio Head for Special Collections Dr Roshini Pather acknowledged Mokoena for her valuable insights, the facilitator, attendees and the organising team from the Killie Campbell Africana Library, ‘all of your contributions have made this lecture an enriching and memorable one.’

To watch the lecture, click here.

Words: Hlengiwe Khwela

Photographs: Supplied