1 Anonymity and the Zulu Policeman : An Economy of Portraiture WISER

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Abstract:

Anonymity and the Zulu Policeman: An Economy of Portraiture

Although it is not surprising to find that the colonial archive is replete with pictures of Africans
who were employed as policemen, soldiers and mercenaries, it is more surprising to find these
types of photographs in private family albums or on sale as postcards. What these two archives
have in common is that in both, the “Native” or “Zulu” policeman is an anonymous subject. This
paper is an attempt to give meaning to this anonymity. It is situated at the intersection of the
visual record of conquest and colonial expansion and the aesthetic cultures, desires and
curiosities that accompanied the arrival of the camera in southern Africa. It will explore the
possibility that although labeled by the nondescript “Zulu Policeman”, many of these subjects
posed for the photographs in ways that suggest that they wanted to assert their individuality. For
the Zulu Policeman the boundary between the visible and the invisible was demarcated by the
supposed authority conferred on them by their state-issued uniform in a social context where the
same uniform marked them as the nemesis of the educated and urban Africans whom they were
meant to survey. By being positioned in this way the Zulu Policeman was meant to visibly
embody the power of the state while also implicitly signifying the allure of Zulu masculinity that
was now being harnessed for policing rather than the defunct regimental discipline. The paper
will thus question the oft-repeated assumption that it was only the mission – and its ideology of
“respectability” – that forced or tempted
Africans towards sartorial correctness and innovation. The image and career of the Zulu
Policeman suggests that the state, or at least its military and policing apparatuses, participated in
an economy of clothing consumption and thereby gave value to the uniforms it issued to its
African employees. This economy of consumption, it will argued, had the unintended
consequence of producing a more spectacular and sometimes brightly coloured economy of
portraiture in which tourists, travellers and settlers purchased, sold and posted pictures of Zulu
policemen.
Introduction
In September of 1901, a Zulu Policeman going by the name of “Cash” walked into the office of
the then Superintendent of Native Affairs in the Transvaal and complained about his pay. He and
his men were not receiving the pay and rations they had been promised. The Superintendent, J.S.
Marwick, then wrote a letter to Captain de Bertadano stating that he had heard the complaint and
was requesting remedy on behalf of these policemen [slide]. This Superintendent will be
introduced later, but it is important to point out that the letter was written during the Anglo-Boer
War, which lasted from 1899-1902. In the 1906 “Rules and Regulations” for the Natal Police,
there is a list of the clothing that is provided for all ranks and units of the police [slide]. For the
“Native Police (Mounted)”, the list includes such items as: great coat, ankle boots, putties, forage
cap and belt (1906, 18). These two examples, the first about pay and the second about clothing,
are what is meant in the title by “economy”. The Zulu policeman was an item of expenditure on
the colonial and government balance sheet. If this however were the only reason for writing
about these men, then it wouldn’t be an interesting one. The list of items issued to the “Native
Policeman” is distinctive because it also specifies how long the said item can be used before a
new one is requested. This rate of depreciation was racialized since from the list it seems that
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only “Native” and “Indian” police were prescribed periods of “wear and tear”, the white officers
were not. This is the other meaning of “economy”: although the state expended on uniforms for
all police and soldiers, a distinction was often made in the “valuation” of these uniforms. This
paper will suggest some of the ways in which colonial governments attempted to fix the value of
uniforms but ultimately couldn’t since factors outside of the military and policing establishments
often determined the “going rate” of military and other uniforms.

Work and Dress

The Zulu Policeman was not the only Zulu to dress for work. A very rough sketch of the history
of dress among Zulu men would position the Zulu policeman somewhere between the “Zulu
Dandy” and the “Zulu Ricksha”. The first category, like the “Zulu Policeman”, was almost
exclusively the creation of photographers. The “Zulu Dandy” was strongly associated with
spectacular hairstyles worn by young Zulu men in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries [slide]. Although both the Zulu Dandy and Zulu Rickshaw have been written about, the
literature – as with the literature on the Zulu policeman – has focussed on the type of labour that
each of these groups of men was engaged in. Thus, in writing about the upsurge in migrant
labour in Durban in the 1870s, Michael Mahoney, provides the following description:
The largest groups of workers on more extended contracts were rickshaw pullers,
policemen, and largest of all, domestic servants. In stark contrast to the present situation, the vast
majority of domestic servants in colonial Durban were young men, mainly because there were so
few African women living there at the time. (Mahoney 2012, 119). Policing, even when it is
counted with domestic servitude and richshaw pulling, is difficult to categorize as a form of
labour – it involves being both a “government servant” and an “independent agent” since police
are rewarded for apprehending criminals in the act of committing crimes. Moreover, unlike the
Zulu rickshaw whose uniform began as a simple “kitchen suit” [slide] and then was added to and
extravagantly accessorised, the Zulu Policeman was prohibited – according to the 1906
regulations – from wearing accessories with his uniform. These two instances suggest that
clothing and social class were coterminous but not causal. In other words, there wasn’t a
functional relationship between the clothes worn and the level of subservience required in the
worker. There is a historical reason why work did not determine clothing or vice versa.
Proclamations, ordinances and bylaws regarding clothing began to be issued from the
1850s onwards. Thus, in a proclamation dated June 19th 1850, the Lieutenant Governor Benjamin
Pine, declared that,

…any Native residing in, visiting, or passing through, either the towns of
Pietermaritzburg, Durban, or Ladysmith, not being clothed with some garment from the shoulder
to the knee, shall, after having been first cautioned, be punished by fine or imprisonment, as
provided by the laws already existing in the District on that head. (Natal and Cadiz 1891, 1492)
Such proclamations were framed in culturalist terms and the Lt. Governor in this case
emphasised the supposition that the settlers and government had tolerated the African lack of
clothing on account of their “peculiar conditions and barbarian habits” (Natal and Cadiz, 1491).
However, one of the other suppositions contained in the proclamation is that Natal’s Africans
were now wage labourers, or at least receiving payment for their labour and goods, and that
therefore what should logically follow from wage labour is the purchase of clothing. As Atkins
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shows, these Natal Africans responded to such bylaws in varied ways and varied styles of dress.
Thus, ship passengers and new arrivals disembarking at Durban’s harbour were greeted with
scenes of “black men “arbitrarily” arrayed – in tattered trousers, top hats, or red woollen
nightcaps; or knee breeches, or old gray soldier’s coats loaded down with shiny trinkets and
other cheap gewgaws” (Atkins 1993, 142). These improvised outfits thus defined these Zulu
men’s entrance into the colonial economy while also at the same time showing that what
constituted appropriate and proper dress was not a universal value or a logical conclusion of the
imposition of dress codes.

The Cape Antecedents: The Loyal Fingoes

Beyond his place in the history of migrant labour, the Zulu policeman has another pedigree. His
designation as a “Native Policeman” [slide] exists almost solely in the photographic archive.
Secondly, the “Zulu Policeman” is preceded in history by a rabble of levies, regiments and
mercenaries [slide]. This latter history is most emblematically represented in a painting by
Thomas Baines – South Africa’s father of landscape painting. Baines (1820–1875) was born in
on November 27, 1820, in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, England. In 1842, he traveled steerage to Cape
Town where he began to practice his art commercially. In 1848, he joined an ox trek north to the
Orange River and gained his first experience of travel into the interior, sketching and painting. In
1851 he enlisted as an artist with the British army in the “Kaffir War” (Cape Frontier War) of
1850–1853, before returning to England. The painting is titled “The Loyal Fingo” and it depicts
African levies in motion. There are many things to be noted about this depiction but first, it is
important to briefly describe who the “Fingoes” [colonial name] or amaMfengu were.
The identity of the amaMfengu is linked to the controversy over the meaning of the “mfecane”
(the social and political upheaval caused by the rise of Shaka Zulu). Like many other ethnic
identities in southern Africa, the amaMfengu enter the scene of colonial conflict and
encroachment as “refugees from Shaka’s wars”. In 1835 they supposedly signed an alliance
treaty with Britain and in exchange for land and Christian education and evangelization, they
agreed to be the allies of the British against the Xhosa as the former extended the Cape Colony
into the eastern Cape. This painting depicts a Mfengu levy with a rifle slung over the shoulder
and multiple objects of adornment and practical use on his person. For our purposes it’s not the
details that matter but the very arbitrary and meddled quality of his attire. Without the rifle, there
is nothing particularly militaristic about his attire – the feathers in the hat, the genet tail and horn
hanging from his waist etc. all suggest sartorial choice rather than military regulation. This
painting is pleasing to the eye because of its irregular combination of rugged practicality and
spectacular dandyism. From the perspective of postcolonial theory and the general criticism of
colonial representation, this painting is not real. It has become the accepted position to read such
paintings as fantastical, that is, they are partly based on reality but are mostly the products of the
imagination of the painter who is often depicted as eager to “exoticize” his subjects while
presenting the landscape as an idyll ready to be conquered and subjugated to Western industry
and cultivation. Baines fits into this stereotype of the colonial “amateur” ethnographer because
not only did he paint and sketch scenes from his expeditions but in 1854 via his contacts in the
Royal Geographical Society (RGS) he joined an expedition to Northern Australia as artist and
storekeeper. He returned once again to the Cape in 1868, this time as “exploring superintendent
and geographer” for the South African Goldfields Exploration Company, with prospecting sights
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on Matabeleland (Stone 2007). “The Loyal Fingo” can therefore not be read as a reflection of the
“liberty” enjoyed by African levies and mercenaries. Yet, for our purposes it is a starting point for
a different kind of enquiry. If we accept the argument that these kinds of paintings are not an
accurate depiction of reality then the question that logically follows is, what happens when the
camera is introduced and colonial armies and police units are captured through the lens? This
transition is at the core of the argument of this paper since as James Ryan argues in Picturing
Empire, then and now photographs are treated as the “eye of history”. He goes on to state that the
assumed “exactitude of the camera” could not have emerged “without the pictorial conventions
of perspectival realism that it inherited via landscape painting” (1997, 16-17). In the case of the
Zulu Policeman, the point is not to only demonstrate this shift from painting to photography, but
also to enumerate the pictorial conventions that have created this archive of photographs and
allow us now to reconstruct elements of the “collective colonial memory” (1997, 12) that
continues to animate these representations.
While Baines was painting Mfengu levies, a complementary war literature was taking
shaping as soldiers and officers wrote about their “frontier” experiences. A different picture of
who the Mfengu were emerges. For the purpose of connecting these levies with the “Zulu
Policeman”, a supposition needs to be made and that is that the Zulu policeman as a type is a
direct descendant of the African levies that were used by the Cape colonial government to fight
“frontier wars” in the nineteenth century. Thus, in his description of the events that precipitated
the War of Mlanjeni (1850-1853), Peires makes a passing observation about the African
“collaborators” who defected and rebelled against the British and joined the Xhosa in the
fighting. He writes,

Meanwhile the ‘Kaffir Police’, a paramilitary body of trained collaborators, rebelled

against their white officers, and the Khoi settlers of the Kat River Valley discarded their
traditional alliance with the Colony to join the Xhosa in an all-out war against white
domination in South Africa. (Peires 1989, 11-12)

The existence of these “Kaffir Police” hints at the use of collaborators of all kinds and the
memoirs of the white officers who fought in this war attest to the presence of African auxiliaries.
Since what we are concerned with is not the act of collaboration but the clothing of the
collaborators,1 it is apt to turn to a description of the dress style of the Mfengu levies found in the
war journal of William Ross King. From his description, we are given the impression that on
receiving their pay, Mfengu levies would spend time and money purchasing clothing. He paid
particular attention to the varied and spectacular quality of their choices:

In town the young men get themselves up in the most extraordinary style, with smart
earrings in their ears, and school-boys’ caps stuck on the top of their heads, with red and
blue velvet tassels; and you daily see them at the stores, laying out their pay in second-
hand European clothes,blue coats with brass buttons, tight fitting surtouts, and
fashionable pantaloons; an accompanying party of friends assisting and advising with the
greatest gravity. Some showed a strong military turn, stitching broad red stripes down
their trowsers, or with an old Cape Corps jacket, swaggering about with a rusty sword
and spurs. But in the field, this attire is laid aside, and the same fellows pass you on the
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line of march, at the double, with a “Hi Charlie2,” their dirty blanket, and raw beef tied on
their backs, and no other clothing than a checked cotton shirt. (King 1853, 101-102)

The use of the word “swagger” points to the fact that for these Mfengu levies being dressed in
European clothing – especially the “military” styles – led to a particular sway and shifting of the
body which is in direct contrast to how they walked and were attired when they were in battle.
When they were doing battle, the levies also seemed to prefer European rifles, muskets and
flintlocks rather than what would be expected to be their preferred “traditional weapons”. The
contrast is starkly drawn in the following two excerpts:

Just as the regiment was assembling for service in the centre of the camp, on Sunday
morning, we were startled by hideous yelling and cries from the Fingoe camp, whereby the
service was delayed for some time. For seeing the Commandant of the garrison galloping over,
followed by other officers, one and all bolted after them to see what was going on, and found
the Fingoes fighting about the division of rations. There were several hundreds of them
struggling like demons, in clouds of dust, yelling out their war-cry, and challenging each other.
All were perfectly naked, the blood running down the black faces and breasts of many from the
blows of “knobkerries,” or clubs, which they applied to each other’s heads with such
astounding force that the very report was enough to give one a headache. (King, 42)

Johnny3 Fingo, in his haste to shoot these poor devils, whom we had stealthily crept upon
(having seen their camp-fire a long way off), forgot to put a cap on his rifle, and as the
gun only snapped fire as he pulled the trigger, some three or four feet from the head of
one of the disputing marauders, he received in return a lounge from an assegai through
his thigh. The rest jumped suddenly up, and an indiscriminate mêlée took place. Poor Dix
received a fearful crack on the skull from a knobkerrie (he was never perfectly right
afterwards); Johnny Fingo got another stab in the legs, and, what affected him still more,
his beautiful “Westley-Richards” double-barrelled rifle, which he had obtained, Heaven
knows how, was irretrievably damaged. (Lakeman 1880, 74)

Johnny Fingo – as his hybrid name implies, was a Mfengu, who earlier in the text is described as
the “chief” of the levies – functions in the second excerpt as the perfect embodiment of the
African auxiliary. His singular concern for his “Westley-Richards” despite his injuries and
despite his witnessing the use of the knobkerrie on his fellow soldier, shows that even as early in
the nineteenth century as the 1850s, African levies did not as a matter of practice only use
knobkerries either for fighting or even for symbolic display. Johnny Fingo saw his power and
authority as resting on his rifle and as reported by Lakeman, “although badly wounded and
unable to stand, was bemoaning his broken rifle as it lay across his knees…he repeatedly asked
me as to the possibility of getting the indented barrels of his rifle rebent to their original shape.”
(Lakeman, 75)
If Johnny Fingo and other African levies valued their rifles so much why are their
successors, the “Zulu Policemen”, photographed holding knobkerries? One possible way to
answer this question is by posing another. In writing about the end of the 6th frontier war of 1836,
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Storey, in his book Guns, Race, and Power in Colonial South Africa, makes the following
observation about Sir Harry Smith’s famous address to the Xhosa chiefs:

The establishment of civilization through commercialization and also through the

undermining of the chiefs became established “native policy” of the Cape Colony. The
overall policy remained in place for the remainder of the nineteenth century. Yet where
did guns fit in? Were they commodities that, if exchanged and used, would tend to
increase civilization? Or were they objects that would be turned against the project of
civilization? (Storey 2008, 77)
There is also a direct answer to the question of whether guns were commodities and that is that as
the nineteenth century ended and African men acquired more guns, especially from working on
the Kimberley diamond fields, successive colonial governments began to impose restrictions or
even ban their ownership by Africans. Another answer to the question is found in the testimonies
collected in The James Stuart Archive. Here the connection between government, the military
and money is made explicit and slightly anachronistic.

The government’s army is money

Although he was intending to collect stories about the past, James Stuart4 often prompted his
informants to talk about their current predicaments and he labelled these as “grievances”. One of
these informants, Mbovu ka Ndengezi, gave a pointed disquisition on the meaning of money and
its connection to government. It is worth quoting at length:

Was it not right to keep money from natives? Money was brought by Europeans. We had
none. Natives should not have been given money because they do not know its use. They
should be paid in clothing and cattle. But coolies, Arabs, and Chinese understand money.
Let contracts exist between them. What is wanted from us is money. After we have
worked, the money we earn is taken from us in every way. Our needs are increased and
we are pressed in every way. We then go out to work and wages are reduced. We have our
own necessities to meet. We would be content without money. We will also work for
hoes. Let pieces of paper be with Europeans…
Money causes crime, thefts etc. If there was no money with us nothing would be wanted
of us. Our people cannot work; they have not been taught. The great thing wanted of us is
money. Although natives cannot [work], are not used to work, they should work as far as
they are able.
The Government built the country with money. Without money we would have become
cannibals…
Government is expanding, every few years. The Government resembles Tshaka, for he
never got tired. Its army is money.
‘Natives will become criminals.’ (Webb and Wright 1982, 29)
The anachronistic link between the colonial government and the reign of Shaka, suggests a
seamless transition from the military strategies and ambitions of the founder of the Zulu kingdom
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and the colonial government. However, other “ambitions” are attributed to the state, namely,
expansion and the spending of money. In Mbovu’s mind these are all connected to the fact that
money, like an army, marches tirelessly in the name of its commanders. These statements could
be dismissed as figurative but they could also be taken seriously as pointing to the basic fact that
colonial governments did spend money on both the expansion of state power and the expansion
of military capacity. Moreover, Mbovu insightfully connects policing with the presence of
money; he observes that without money there would be no crime and therefore no
criminalization of Africans. From his perspective, the “Zulu Policeman” is exactly a functionary
of the state because he is the army that is constituted with money.
This consumptive function of the state can also be discerned in the history of policing in
Natal – where most of the photographs of Zulu policemen were taken. On the establishment of
policing as a profession, one of the most thorough sources is H.P. Holt’s The Mounted Police of
Natal5. The value of this book is that not only does it detail the history of Natal’s first police
force but it is also dedicated and prefaced by Major-General Sir. J.G. Dartnell, K.C.B the founder
of the policing corps. An excerpt from his preface gives us a sense of what considerations,
compromises and exigencies influenced the creation of a colonial police unit. Thus, on the
character and quality of colonists available for recruitment Major Dartnell wrote [slide]:

I wanted to send home for men, but this the Government would not sanction, so I had to
start recruiting amongst the flotsam and jetsam of the colony, and a very rough lot they
proved to be, being principally old soldiers and sailors, transport riders, and social
failures from home, etc. (Holt 2009, viii)

This corps of mounted police was established in 1873 and one of the first obstacles to overcome
was the question of clothing and uniforms. Thus, Major Dartnell again wrote [slide]:

The clothing was at first the same as that worn by the Frontier Armed and Mounted
Police, viz., brown corduroy jacket and breeches, black leather boots coming nearly to the
knee and buckled down the side, and a leather peaked cap with a white cover. It was a
stinking uniform, however, which caused the men to be nicknamed “The Snuffs,”6 but
anything in the shape of uniform was hard to get in the colony at the time. Afterwards, as
more suitable uniform was obtained, the men began to put on a little “side” when walking
out, and the then Governor said to me one day: “Your men swagger too much. We don’t
want swashbucklers.” To that I replied: “If you knew the difficulty I have had to make
them forget the name of ‘Snuffs’ and instil a little swagger into them, you wouldn’t wish
to see it reduced.”
A little later on another Governor said, with reference to his orderly at Government
House: “I wish you wouldn’t send a prince in disguise as my orderly, for he looks so
spick and span that I am almost ashamed of my own get-up whenever I pass him.” (Holt,
viii)

These two quotes point to the obvious relationship that exists between a uniform and behaviour –
the “flotsam and jetsam” of the colony is transformed into princely countenance by an
appropriate and socially accepted uniform. Beyond this obvious “functionalization”7 of the
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uniforms, as Roland Barthes would put it, the statement also tells us something about the
pedigree of the Corps – it borrowed its uniform from the Frontier Armed and Mounted Police
and in his preface the Major-General describes how when he was appointed to his position he
had requested permission to travel to the Cape Colony to “learn something of police work, for
they had had a mounted police force there for some few years” (Holt, xi-xii). This lineage of one
colonial force copying or learning from another has important implications for understanding
how notions of proper dress travelled from place to place. Or, expressed differently, Mbovu’s
assertions that the government’s army is money are embodied in the “swagger” that officers
would put on once they were dressed in their uniforms. Thus, the uniform can be understood as
the embodiment of the government’s ability to create and spend money.
The economic imperative of recruiting, clothing and paying policemen took on a different
meaning with the large-scale urbanization of the African population [slide]. From this
perspective, these photographs could be understood to be in fact complements to another kind of
archive – namely, the archive of military despatches and letters that actually defined why and
how Zulu men were specifically recruited for military and policing service. Thus we return to
“Cash”, the policeman. In this letter [slide] stamped 30 November 1900 the same J. S. Marwick
we met earlier bemoans the fact that only 20 Africans are employed in policing the “locations” of
Pretoria. The letter is addressed to the Military Governor and states:

Having regard to the fact that there are, - including Government labourers, about 7000
working Natives alone in Pretoria, - not to speak of the families in the Locations – I think
the number of Native Police employed is not in excess of present requirements.
Native Constables, – provided they be without local interests – are much more useful in
policing people of their own colour than European police could be. In addition to keeping
the Native population under proper control they have means of obtaining information
which are not afforded to European Police.
The proposal to fix the strength of Native Police for Pretoria at 20 only should not be
approved. Even in time of peace sixty, at the very least, would be required.

This letter shifts the attention away from the uniforms and dress of African policemen towards
the “function” they were meant to serve while in uniform. This letter clearly distinguishes the
“Native Police” from the “European Police” by suggesting that the Native policeman has skills
of investigation and interrogation that are not available to the European. Moreover, Marwick
accidentally points to one of the characteristics that was necessary for the making of the
appropriate “Native Constable”: he was to “be without local interests”, meaning that he could
not be from the urban location itself. He had to be from elsewhere. As the photographic archive
attests, this elsewhere was Natal or Zululand. Marwick is a central figure in the history of
Africans working on the Rand for another reason. Not only is he remembered as the organizer
and leader of an 1899 march of approximately 7,000 Zulu men who were fleeing the onset of the
Anglo-Boer War, he became an expert on what he termed “Natives in the Larger Towns” – the
title of a talk he gave on August 7, 1918 (Mahoney 2012, 145-149). The three main themes of
Marwick’s talk were clothing, housing and work and he advocated for various methods by which
Africans could be introduced to all three. On the subject of “improvidence” for example, he
observed:
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…the authorities constantly receive appeals from the relatives of Natives asking that they
may be prevailed upon to recognise their obligations to their families or that they may be induced
to return to their homes. It is stated with regard to the negroes of Jamaica and Demerara that the
“motive which was most relied on for inducing them to work as their love of fine clothes and
personal ornaments.” It cannot be said, however, that extravagance goes hand in hand with
industry among the South African Natives. Usually the most thriftless are those of the idle and
vicious class, who never want to work. (Marwick and Rich 1993, 34) The crime of not wanting
to work appears repeatedly in colonial literature and so does the accusation of “idleness”. In
Marwick’s version of the colonial economy, Africans could be induced through the appropriate
by-laws to offer their labour and their be turned into industrious and tax-paying subjects.
However, an unexpected instance of “idleness” and punishment is the example of Fayedwa, the
ventriloquist whose story appears in H.P. Holt’s The Mounted Police of Natal. Holt begins with
the generalization that:

The average Zulu distinctly objects to work, and, when he can, he lives by his wits,
though he rarely knows how to do that properly. There is one notable exception in the
person of Fayedwa.
Nobody who ever had anything to do with this individual will forget him. He is in prison
now, and he has been in prison a dozen times before, but he is one of the most remarkable
ventriloquists breathing. Every Zulu has a way of making himself heard at a distance.
This is due to the formation of the Zulu words, and the native’s clear enunciation,
although many people living in the country to-day ascribe it to a form of ventriloquism.
This faculty was strongly developed in Fayedwa, and in his early youth he travelled about
with a circus, doing an ordinary “boy’s” work. A ventriloquist who was amongst the
performers interested him greatly, and Fayedwa studied at his feet, eventually becoming
far more expert than his master. Perhaps he would have been a good Zulu all the days of
his life had he not picked up the trick of ventriloquism, but it ruined him socially and
morally; for he is a wily mortal, and soon saw that he could earn a lot of money by
frightening his simple, superstitious fellow-beings. (Holt 2009, 299-300)
Although the fuller story of Fayedwa’s arrest, trials, appeals and imprisonment cannot be detailed
here, the reason why it’s relevant is that although he was committing a “trick” which he had been
taught while working for Europeans, “native constables” were sent to arrest him. He thus stands
in sharp contrast to Africans who engaged in diamond theft and smuggling in Kimberley and
other diamond mining towns. For now, it is important to note that ventriloquism is not and was
not a crime, but as Holt points out Fayedwa was prosecuted for earning a lot of money by
performing tricks on the gullible. He eluded capture in the same way:

Improbable though this sounds, for the average music-hall ventriloquist could not deceive
any one in the same way, it is officially recorded at the C.I.D. that for years Fayedwa kept
the native police from laying hands on him by means of ventriloquism. They looked upon
him as something sacred. (Holt 2009, 301)
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If Fayedwa represents one kind of “criminality” which the “Zulu Policeman” was meant
to check and failed to do so, then the policing of urban areas is another function which these
policemen were tasked with and often failed to execute. This is clearly expressed in Marwick’s
1900 letter about Pretoria in which the function being defined is that of “proper control” – the
Native policeman is not patrolling Pretoria’s urban locations in order to “keep the peace” or
ensure the safety of the denizens. He is there to keep the “population under proper control”. This
placed the policeman in direct confrontation with urbanized Africans, especially the urban elite
who chafed against the constant supervision and surveillance represented by policemen. In 1911
Sol Plaatje [slide; brief explanation & pause] published an article in the Pretoria News titled ‘The
Amalaita Bands: Some Criticism of the Native Police’ in which he painted a different portrait of
the character and behaviour of the Native Police [slide]:

For a picture of the average Zulu policeman at Johannesburg I would depict this; A
creature, giant-like and large as to proportions, ferocious and forbidding of aspect, most
callously brutal of action, and irredeemably ignorant. The knowledge that it is but
necessary to call attention of the higher police officials to this matter to obtain remedy,
and that there is no more kindly, courteous and humane gentleman anywhere than is
Major Douglass, Deputy Commissioner, induces me to devote a short chapter to this
subject in the sincere belief and hope that it will not be in vain. (Plaatje 1976, 59)
This caricature of the boorish and ignorant Zulu Policeman points to a literary history of these
servicemen. The fact that Plaatje – a member of the nineteenth-century black elite and a man of
letters – dedicated an article to the problem of urban criminal gangs (the Amalaita) and the
ineffectual policing by African policemen, suggests that there were many more such complaints.
From Plaatje’s perspective the “Native policeman” was not actually keeping the black population
under control (as defined by the 1900 letter) but was in fact negligent in their duty since they did
not prevent or arrest the growth and violence of the Amalaita gangs. Beyond this grievance
however is another relationship that is being defined here – Plaatje, and by implication other
educated Africans – saw the Zulu Policemen not as a compatriot or civil servant but as a nemesis.
This antagonistic relationship between educated Africans and the ignoble Zulu policeman
contradicts the swaggering image depicted by the founder of Natal’s police force. As a literary
theme this antagonistic relationship offers us the opportunity to define the position of African
policemen in the emerging class structure of urban South Africa. Moreover, it seems that the
police force or forces also published their own journal or magazine from 1907 onwards (Natal
1907, Police et al. 1915). This publication was originally called Nongqai – the Zulu word for a
“night watchman” or security guard – and was then changed in 1979 to the Latin name Servamus
(meaning “to serve”). The fact that police officers founded their own journal, which wasn’t
originally concerned with policing and security issues but was a literary and “human interest”
magazine, hints at a possible comparative approach. That is, it is possible to argue that while the
educated Africans had their own views and complaints about the police; the police in turn
evolved their own literary response to the public’s contempt.8

Conclusion
 11 Anonymity and the Zulu Policeman : An Economy of Portraiture WISER
Seminar (Wits University)
Although it is not surprising to find that the colonial archive is replete with pictures of Africans
who were employed as policemen, soldiers and mercenaries, it is more surprising to find these
types of photographs in private family albums or on sale as postcards [slide]. What these two
archives have in common is that in both, the “Native” or “Zulu” policeman is an anonymous
subject. This paper has attempted to give meaning to this anonymity. It traced the origins of the
“Zulu Policeman” back to the “frontier wars” of the nineteenth century and situated the image of
the “Loyal Fingo”, as a predecessor, at the intersection of the visual record of conquest and
colonial expansion and, the aesthetic cultures, desires and curiosities that accompanied the
arrival of the camera in southern Africa. It asserted that although they were labelled by the
nondescript “Zulu Policeman”, many of these subjects, with the Mfengu as their example, could
assert their individuality. The evidence was the textual trace of testimonies found in The James
Stuart Archive. Visually, the boundary between the visible and the invisible was demarcated by
the supposed authority conferred on policemen by their state-issued uniform. Textually, the “Zulu
Policeman” was fixed in a social context where the same uniform marked him as the nemesis of
the educated and urban Africans whom they were meant to survey. By being positioned in this
way, the Zulu Policeman was meant to visibly embody the power of the state while also
implicitly signifying the allure of Zulu masculinity that was now being harnessed for policing
rather than the defunct regimental discipline. The paper thus questioned the oft-repeated
assumption that it was only the mission – and its ideology of “respectability” – that forced or
tempted Africans towards sartorial correctness and innovation. The image and career of the Zulu
Policeman suggests that the state, or at least its military and policing apparatuses, participated in
an economy of clothing consumption and thereby gave value to the uniforms it issued to its
African employees. This economy of consumption had the unintended consequence of producing
a more spectacular and sometimes brightly coloured economy of portraiture in which tourists,
travellers and settlers purchased, sold and posted pictures of Zulu policemen.

Bibliography

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Barthes, Roland. 2006. The Language of Fashion. Translated by Andy Stafford. Edited by Andy
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Holt, H. P. 2009. The Mounted Police of Natal. London: Bibliolife [John Murray]. Original
edition, 1913.

King, William Ross. 1853. Campaigning in Kaffirland; or, Scenes and Adventures in the Kaffir
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Lakeman, Stephen Bartlet. 1880. What I Saw in Kaffir-land. Edinburgh; London: W. Blackwood
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 12 Anonymity and the Zulu Policeman : An Economy of Portraiture WISER
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 13 Anonymity and the Zulu Policeman : An Economy of Portraiture WISER
Seminar (Wits University)

1
Although I have read Peires’ The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great
Xhosa
Cattle-Killing Movement of 1856-7, it was only after reading James Whyle’s The Book of
War (2012) that I truly apprehended the sartorial language that suffused the memoirs of
the British soldiers who fought in colonial “frontier wars”.
2
One of the definitions of the word “Charlie” as given by the OED is: “The name
formerly given to a night-watchman. [The origin is unknown: some have conjectured
‘because Charles I in 1640 extended and improved the watch system in the metropolis’.]”
(“Charley | Charlie, n.”. OED Online. September 2012. Oxford University Press.
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/30754?redirectedFrom=Charlie (accessed November 06,
2012)).
3
The OED gives the following definition of Johnny: “…slang. A policeman. Also
Johnny Darby, Johnny Hop.” (“Johnny | Johnnie, n.”. OED Online. September 2012.
Oxford University Press.
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/101516?redirectedFrom=Johnny (accessed November
06, 2012)).
4
James Stuart was born in 1868 in Pietermaritzburg. In 1881, he was sent to
England, for his education. He returned to Natal in 1886, and after working in the post
office in Pietermaritzburg, he was appointed clerk to the resident magistrate of Eshowe in
the recently annexed British colony of Zululand in 1888. Stuart became a magistrate in
Zululand in 1895, and subsequently at various centres in Natal. In 1909 he was appointed
Assistant Secretary for Native Affairs, the second highest post in the colony’s Native
Affairs Department. In 1912, for reasons that are not clear, he retired at the age of 44, and
returned to Natal. In 1922, for reasons which again are not clear, he left Natal and settled
in London where he lived and died in 1942. (Wright 1996, 334)
5
Holt, H. P. 2009. The Mounted Police of Natal. London: Bibliolife [John Murray].
Original edition, 1913.
6
One of the meanings of the word snuff is: “To detect, perceive, or anticipate, by inhaling
the odour of” (OED). The pun being made here is that the uniform was so smelly that the
police could be snuffed from a distance.
7
In his influential and seminal book The Language of Fashion, Roland Barthes makes the
following observation about clothing: ‘outside of the leisured classes, dress is never
linked to the work experienced by the wearer: the whole problem of how clothes are
functionalized is ignored’ (Barthes 2006, 5).
8
For examples of some of the article published in Nongqai see:
http://www.esaach.org.za/index.php?title=Zulu_Literature

July 2013