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‘I TOLD HIM I WAS LENNOX NJOKWENI’: HONOR AND RACIAL ETIQUETTE IN SOUTHERN RHODESIA*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2011

ALLISON K. SHUTT
ALLISON K. SHUTT
Affiliation:
Hendrix College
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Abstract

This article focuses on a single episode of racial interaction in 1931 in order to highlight competing notions of honor and respectability in a shared colonial society. This story elucidates how Africans and whites unraveled and rebuilt ‘racial etiquette’, the tacit code that guided individual encounters between blacks and whites and that were so vital to the expression of colonial power. In moments of transition, such as the early 1930s in Southern Rhodesia, the minutiae of racial etiquette were confusing, and this allowed for some dialogue between Africans and whites about what constituted proper behavior. As this story makes clear, Africans were as much a part of composing racial etiquette as whites, despite – indeed, because of – the latter's political power.

Keywords

Zimbabweclassclothescolonialismrace
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , November 2010 , pp. 323 - 341
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 J. Iliffe, Honour in African History (Cambridge, 2005), 1.

2 Iliffe titles the second part of his book ‘Fragmentation and Mutation’.

3 Iliffe, Honour, 307.

4 Which is precisely Martin Klein's critique of Iliffe's book, ‘Review of John Iliffe, Honour in African History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)’, April 2006, http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11644 (accessed 5 November 2010).

5 Iliffe, Honour, 4–5.

6 R. Ross, Status and Respectability in the Cape Colony, 1750–1870: A Tragedy of Manners (Cambridge, 1999).

7 Iliffe, Honour, 4.

8 Ibid. 246.

9 As in the ‘AmaRespectables’ cited in Ibid. 246. Among the works that have influenced my thinking are Ross, Status and Respectability; and M. West, The Rise of an African Middle Class: Colonial Zimbabwe, 1898–1965 (Bloomington, 2002). T. Barnes's notion of ‘righteousness’ points to the lively debates among people over who and what was respectable: ‘We Women Worked So Hard’: Gender, Urbanization and Social Reproduction in Colonial Harare, Zimbabwe, 1930–1956 (Porstmouth, NH, 1999), especially ch. 4. Historians of South Africa have explored the malleability of respectability by considering how it was engaged by working-class people and deployed in gendered debates. See S. Marks, ‘Patriotism, patriarchy and purity: Natal and the politics of Zulu ethnic consciousness’, in L. Vail (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Berkeley, 1991), 215–40; Goodhew, D., ‘Working-class respectability: the example of the western areas of Johannesburg, 1930–55’, Journal of African History, 41:2 (2000), 241–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas, L., ‘The modern girl and racial respectability in 1930s South Africa’, Journal of African History, 47:3 (2006), 461–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 The vital source is West, Rise.

11 F. Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Los Angeles, 2005), 7. Chapter 3, on ‘identity’, is a vivid example of the confusion between indigenous and analytical terms.

12 Cooper's description of Max Gluckman's analysis of a bridge-building exercise in South Africa: Colonialism, 36.

13 Ross's work, Status and Respectability, is exemplary.

14 I have been influenced by J. Ritterhouse, Growing Up Jim Crow: How Black and White Southern Children Learned Race (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006).

15 Ibid. 5–6, 240–1, n. 6.

16 L. Vambe, From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, with an Introduction by Judith Acton (Pittsburgh, 1976), 167. Vambe does not provide a firm date, but it appears from the context of his discussion that Janhi worked in the 1940s.

17 On ‘improvisation’ see Ritterhouse, Growing Up, 5.

18 National Archives of Zimbabwe, Harare, (NAZ), N3/1/20, Acting Native Commissioner (NC), Ft. Victoria to Chief Native Commissioner, 22 Dec. 1899. In a twist of a usual story, in this case the NC used these words to explain why he dragged an offensive settler off his horse and beat him.

19 As in the American South, Ritterhouse, Growing Up, 4 and ch. 2.

20 The chapter title for the period 1934–48 in West's Rise.

21 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, Lennox Njokweni to the Principal, 25 Feb. 1931. West provides a neat summary of Njokweni's case in Rise, 21–3.

22 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, R. Tapson, assistant native commissioner (ANC), to (NC), Inyati, 3 March 1931.

23 Ibid.; Njokweni to the Principal, 25 Feb. 1931.

24 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, W. G. Brown to the NC, Inyati, 16 Feb. 1931.

25 All this correspondence is in NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31.

26 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, H. U. Moffat, the premier, ‘A. N. C. Tapson & Complaint from Native’, 23 March 1931.

27 West, Rise, 22.

28 Ibid. 23.

29 On split-second decisions to avoid violence, see Ritterhouse, Growing Up, 47–8.

30 For other moments of transition in racial etiquette see Shutt, A. K. and King, T., ‘Imperial Rhodesians: the 1953 Rhodes Centenary Exhibition in Southern Rhodesia’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 31:2 (June 2005), 357–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; C. Hamilton (on the resort ‘Shakaland’), Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka and the Limits of Historical Invention (Cambridge, MA, 1998).

31 Shutt, A. K., ‘“The natives are getting out of control”: legislating manners, insolence and contemptuous behavior in Southern Rhodesia, c. 1910–1963’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 33:3 (September 2007), 653–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Shutt, ‘“The natives”’, 666–7, 671–2.

33 R. Palmer, Land and Racial Domination in Rhodesia (Los Angeles, 1977).

34 J. Alexander, The Unsettled Land: State-making & the Politics of Land in Zimbabwe 1893–2003 (Athens, OH, 2006), 27, 28; West, Rise, 134–8.

35 Alexander, Unsettled State, 27–8.

36 On threats of law suits from Africans, see NAZ, S138/43, 1928–31, Chief Mkotame Kona to the NC, Inyati, 18 Jan. 1930; chief headman of Fingo location, Mkotame Kona to Messrs. Webb & Law, Attorney, 26 Jan. 1930.

37 Msindo, E., ‘Ethnicity and nationalism in urban colonial Zimbabwe: Bulawayo, 1950 to 1963’, Journal of African History, 48:2 (2007), 270–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ranger, T., ‘The meaning of urban violence in Africa: Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1960’, Cultural and Social History, 3 (2006), 193–228CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Barnes, ‘We Women’, 55, ch. 4–5.

39 Cooper, Colonialism, 73–5; West, Rise.

40 West, Rise, 140.

41 Ranger, T., ‘Tales of the “Wild West”: gold-diggers and rustlers in south-west Zimbabwe, 1898–1940: an essay in the use of criminal court records for social history’, South African Historical Journal, 28 (1993), 40–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 I borrow this notion from D. Jeater, (Law, Language, and Science: The Invention of the ‘Native Mind’ in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1930 (Portsmouth, NH, 2007), 234), who, in turn, credits a personal communication with Julie Livingston.

43 C. Summers, From Civilization to Segregation: Social Ideals and Social Control in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1934 (Athens, OH, 1994), 189; C. Summers, Colonial Lessons: Africans' Education in Southern Rhodesia, 1918–1940 (Portsmouth, NH, 2002), 31.

44 Summers, Colonial Lessons, 30.

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid. 32. A strike in 1932 was much more serious and resulted in the resignation of Brown.

47 Quoted in ibid. 32.

48 Ibid. 33.

49 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, W. G. Brown to the chief native commissioner (CNC), 26 Feb. 1931.

50 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, W. G. Brown to the NC, Inyati, 26 Feb. 1931.

51 Ibid.

52 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, Brown to the NC, Inyati, 16 Feb. 1931. On education standards, see Summers, Colonial Lessons, 30.

53 NAZ, NVA 1/2/1, Confidential report on staff, Robert Ross Tapson, superintendent of natives (SoN), Victoria, 28 June 1917.

54 NAZ, S138/43, 1928–31, H. U. Moffat to the secretary, 18 Feb. 1930, attached to the Private Secretary to the CNC, Rex v Nyashano, 19 Feb. 1930.

55 NAZ, S138/43, 1928–31, NC, Inyati to the SoN, Matabeleland, 28 Feb. 1930.

56 NAZ, S1542/C15/2, CNC, Carbutt to the SoN, Matabeleland, 4 Jan. 1935; Tapson, ANC, Filibusi to the NC, Filabusi, stamped 20 Dec. 1934; J. R. Perrins to the CNC, 1 Dec. 1934.

57 E. Goffman, Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior (New York, 1967), title on 149.

58 In writing about an 1883 race riot, Jane Dailey suggests that the participants offered ‘multiple, contradictory, and fundamentally incompatible versions of the riot’, which turned on debates about ‘manners, honor, and status, and questions about who controlled public space’. Dailey, Jane, ‘Deference and violence in the postbellum urban south: manners and massacres in Danville, Virginia’, Journal of Southern History, 18:3 (1997), 575Google Scholar. See also Summers, C., ‘“Subterranean evil” and “tumultuous riot” in Buganda: authority and alienation at King's College, Budo, 1942’, Journal of African History, 47:1 (2006), 93–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 High Court Decisions, 1912, Rex v Guthrie and Rex v Isaac, 10–14; Shutt, ‘“The Natives”’, 662.

60 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, Lennox Njokweni to the principal, 25 Feb. 1931.

61 Ibid.

62 Ibid.

63 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, NC, Inyati to the SoN, Bulawayo, 16 March 1931, marginal note at the bottom dated 18 March 1931.

64 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, W. G. Brown to the NC, Inyati, 26 Feb. 1931. The remainder of this paragraph and the next are from this letter.

65 Boyer, Richard, ‘Respect and identity: horizontal and vertical reference points in speech acts’, The Americas 54:4 (1998), 491–509CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, W. G. Brown to the NC, Inyati, 26 Feb. 1931.

67 NAZ, S138/43, 1928–31, W. G. Brown to the NC, Inyati, 26 Feb. 1931.

68 NAZ, S138/43, 1928–31, W. G. Brown to the CNC, 26 Feb. 1931.

69 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, R. Tapson, ANC, to the NC, Inyati, 3 March 1931.

70 Ibid.

71 Ibid.

72 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, NC, Inyati to SoN, Bulawayo, 16 March 1931.

73 NAZ, S138/43, 1928–31, SoN, Bulawayo to CNC, 14 March 1931.

74 Summers, From Civilization, 185.

75 NAZ, S138/22, 1927–28, CNC to the magistrate, Salisbury, 26 Jan. 1928. See also the correspondence over rank and clothing in N3/21/10. Carbutt became CNC in 1930.

76 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, H. U. Moffat, ‘A. N. C. Tapson & Complaint from Native’, 23 March 1931.

77 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, CNC to the secretary to the premier, 20 March 1931.

78 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, SoN, Matabeleland to CNC, 9 Sept. 1929.

79 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, CNC to the secretary to the premier, 20 March 1931.

80 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–1931, H. U. Moffat, ‘A. N. C. Tapson & Complaint from Native’, 23 March 1931.

81 As noted by West, The Rise, 22–23. This paragraph draws on the correspondence between Brown, Greer, and the premier in NAZ, S138/41, 1926–1931.

82 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, H. U. Moffat, ‘A. N. C. Tapson & Complaint from Native’, 23 March 1931.

83 Ibid.

84 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, CNC to the principal, London Mission, Inyati, 4 June 1931.

85 NAZ, S138/41, 1926–31, ANC, Shangani Reserve to NC, Inyati, 14 May 1931.

86 Review Cases, vol. III, Part III, 1948: Rex v Zenzo, 22 July 1948, 27–8.

87 NAZ, MS 665/1, R. Tapson to Dear Turton [the CNC], 6 June 1950.

88 Jeater, Law.

89 J. Ritterhouse, ‘The etiquette of race relations in the Jim Crow South’, in Ted Owmby (ed.), Manners and Southern History (Jackson, MS, 2007), 23.

90 Ritterhouse, Growing Up, 13.

91 Cooper, Colonialism, 73.