UUnniivveerrssiittyy ooff PPeennnnssyyllvvaanniiaa SScchhoollaarrllyyCCoommmmoonnss Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2015 EEmmppiirree UUnnbboouunndd -- IImmppeerriiaall CCiittiizzeennsshhiipp,, RRaaccee aanndd DDiiaassppoorraa iinn tthhee MMaakkiinngg ooff SSoouutthh AAffrriiccaa Khwezi Mkhize University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the African American Studies Commons, African Languages and Societies Commons, and the African Studies Commons RReeccoommmmeennddeedd CCiittaattiioonn Mkhize, Khwezi, "Empire Unbound - Imperial Citizenship, Race and Diaspora in the Making of South Africa" (2015). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1096. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1096 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1096 For more information, please contact [email protected]. EEmmppiirree UUnnbboouunndd -- IImmppeerriiaall CCiittiizzeennsshhiipp,, RRaaccee aanndd DDiiaassppoorraa iinn tthhee MMaakkiinngg ooff SSoouutthh AAffrriiccaa AAbbssttrraacctt "Empire Unbound" is an exploration of the history and politics of empire and imperial citizenship that went into the making of South Africa before the Second World War. The making of racial difference in South Africa is often located in the temporal and political terrain that is Apartheid (1948-1994). In this dissertation I look to the history of South Africa in the long nineteenth century and recuperate the frameworks of empire and imperial citizenship in making sense of struggles for belonging. Empire, both as a form of government and imaginary, invokes a degree of scale that exceeds the nation-state. It also historically precedes the nation-state, which has come to exemplify the model form for organizing sovereign polities. In "Empire Unbound" I argue that as South Africa became a self governing territory in the early twentieth century it folded the remnants of empire into its instrumentalities of racial governance. I therefore explore South Africa's imperial politics and imaginary as it extends to other parts of Southern Africa such as Namibia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana. Empires also have histories that date back to maritime commerce and the making of the modern world. In in this dissertation I turn to Cape Town to examine the ways in which this long history of empire gradually formed the grammars of belonging in South Africa and the Atlantic world. Black intellectuals in South Africa during the early twentieth century had their investments in empire but theirs was a struggle to wrestle its grammars into a form that included blackness in its regime of belonging. It was especially after the First World War that these intellectuals sought to write themselves and the colonized masses of the world into an alternative grammar of sovereignty. I demonstrate in this dissertation that these intellectuals were far from mimic men and women; they were involved in a dialogue of reshaping what it meant to belong in the world after empire. DDeeggrreeee TTyyppee Dissertation DDeeggrreeee NNaammee Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) GGrraadduuaattee GGrroouupp Africana Studies FFiirrsstt AAddvviissoorr Deborah A. Thomas KKeeyywwoorrddss Black Diaspora, Black Intellectuals, Empire, Imperial Citizenship, Race, South Africa SSuubbjjeecctt CCaatteeggoorriieess African American Studies | African Languages and Societies | African Studies This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1096 EMPIRE UNBOUND: IMPERIAL LIBERALISM, RACE AND DIASPORA IN THE MAKING OF SOUTH AFRICA Khwezi Mkhize A DISSERTATION in Africana Studies Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2015 Supervisor of Dissertation ______________________________ Dr. Deborah A. Thomas, Professor of Anthropology and Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania Graduate Group Chairperson ______________________________ Dr. Herman Beavers, Associate Professor of English and Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania Dissertation Committee Dr. Cheikh Anta Babou, Associate Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania
 Dr. Tsitsi E. Jaji, Associate Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania
 Dr. Deborah A. Thomas, Professor of Anthropology and Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania !ii Dedication For my Parents and Grand-Parents who made my world possible and held it together longer than I can remember !iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS At last, some words of gratitude and acknowledgement at the end of a rite of passage. Becoming an “arrivant” at some threshold is a thing that memory threatens to behold in an unruly fashion. A certain narrative of “completion” is imposing itself on me with deceptive orderliness. In invoking your names and thanking you all, I am reminding myself that if the dots ever came together at all, it is because you lent me your shoulders to stand on. I will carry this deeply within me, lest new myths in the coming passages give struggle the appearance of providence. My advisor Deborah Thomas has been an incredible wealth of knowledge, support and a great, I mean great, example, of how to do and live Africana Studies. Thank you for walking me through the various mutations of becoming a scholar, keeping your door open, the wonderful food you fed us, and your staunch reminder to find in ongoing struggles the need to overstand knowledge, as the Rastafari say. It is impossible to imagine how one could have deigned to straddle the lines between Africa and the black diaspora, between literary and cultural studies, and between reading and listening without the patient and generous presence of Tsitsi Jaji. I am deeply fortunate that my years in Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania coincided with yours. Cheikh Anta Babou has been the epitome of patient, deliberate and concise thinking and writing. My years spent as your student has opened me up to the rigors and demands of historical thinking and the ever present specter of religion in what we study. In Chinua Achebe’s novel Arrow of God, Ezeulu advises his son that “the world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it you do not stand in one place.” This is true of my teachers at the Department of African Literature and the University of the Witwatersrand who refused to let me stand in one place - even though it was the home they had raised me in - and sent me off to graduate school in the U.S. As it turned out I landed in the last American university that Professor Es’kia Mphahlele taught in before returning to South Africa and founding the Department of African Literature! Professors Bhekizizwe Peterson and Isabel Hofmeyr have been constantly present in my life and pushed me over the years to reach beyond myself. I hope, one day, to make you proud and do under others as you have done unto me. I also thank the faculty and staff of the department of African Literature, Mrs Merle Govind, Professors James Ogude, Dan Ojwang, Pumla Dineo Gqola and Litheko Modisane for being such model scholars. The faculty and staff at the Center and Department of Africana Studies at UPenn and beyond created a social and intellectual space that came to embody home in the past six years. I thank Professors John L. Jackson, Jr. Eve Troutt Powell, Barbara Savage, Rita Barnard, Audrey Mbeje, Ntongela Masilela, Simon Gikandi, Innocent Mhlambi, Gabeba Baderoon, Tanji Gilliam, Ms Carol Davis, Ms Gale Garrison and Ms Michelle Gilliard Houston. James Spady has been a mentor to me outside of the classroom since we met in between the book shelves of Van Pelt library in the fall of 2009. He has helped me imagine black Philadelphia and the African American diaspora in ways that have enriched my attempts !iv at scholarship. Jonathan Highfield and Claudia Ford afforded me an opportunity to teach at the Rhode Island School of Design in the spring of 2009. They, along with their families, have been done more for me than they can imagine. I am grateful for the remarkable time that we have shared thus far. My research has been supported by archivists and librarians in South Africa and the United States. I would be remiss if I did not thank you. To my motley crew of fellow travelers and children of Africa and its diaspora: in the pages that follow is a dissertation but behind it is the invisible story of our friendship, our ongoing conversations, food, anguishes and joys shared over years. You have all been so essential to this elusive thing that I call my identity, intellectual and personal. I do not imagine there to be an essential difference between the words that we have shared over the years and what I have written. We thought things through together. In the end, what I have written will have to stand on its own but I will take this moment to call on your names to shadow the substance: Krystal “Dada” Smalls, Christopher Ernest Werimo Ouma, Laura “Fellow Prodigal” McTighe, Marina Bilbija, Venise Adjibodou, Wilfredo Gomez, Cameron Brickhouse, Nomaduma Masilela, Derilene Marco, Kemang Wa Lehulere, Faye Baldoz, Jeremy Dell, Palesa Shongwe, Ntsako Mkhabela, Julius B. Fleming, Jr., Karl Swinehart, Layla “Mase Nadodo” Ben-Ali, Celina De Sa, Josslyn Luckett, Diana Burnett, Savannah Shange, Eziaku Nwokocha, Sara-Ellen Strongman, Stephanie Contreras, Mphathi Mutloane, Richara Leona Krayewski, Monika Bhagat- Kennedy, Kathleen Ebersohn-Khuvutlu, Lebogang Mokwena, Simangele Mabena, Elizabeth Dyer, Christine Thu Nhi Dang, Marissa Mika, Nikki Kalbing, Unifier Dyer, Anand Venkatkrishnan and Shireen Hamza. Smangele and Lesedi: of course, you’ve waited for this mythical and often uncertain odyssey to reach some sort of conclusion. I hope that the pieces align, this time, as they should, and that what should be remains engrained in the memory of elephants. My family: the Mkhizes, the Nyantumbus and their ongoing extensions seem to have been standing in absented present time and on the other side of it, not to mention on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. I cannot say thank you without recalling the monumental amounts of waiting and loving you have bestowed upon me. Thank you all. The last word goes to my parents: Busisiwe and Themba Mkhize. Only you posses the memory of how long you have done what you have done for me. All I can do is marvel. My gratitude to you is unending. !v ABSTRACT EMPIRE UNBOUND: IMPERIAL LIBERALISM, RACE AND DIASPORA IN THE MAKING OF SOUTH AFRICA Khwezi Mkhize Deborah A. Thomas Empire Unbound is an exploration of the history and politics of empire and imperial citizenship that went into the making of South Africa before the Second World War. The making of racial difference in South Africa is often located in the temporal and political terrain that is Apartheid (1948-1994). In this dissertation I look to the history of South Africa in the long nineteenth century and recuperate the frameworks of empire and imperial citizenship in making sense of struggles for belonging. Empire, both as a form of government and imaginary, invokes a degree of scale that exceeds the nation-state. It also historically precedes the nation-state, which has come to exemplify the model form for organizing sovereign polities. In Empire Unbound I argue that as South Africa became a self governing territory in the early twentieth century it folded the remnants of empire into its instrumentalities of racial governance. I therefore explore South Africa’s imperial politics and imaginary as it extends to other parts of Southern Africa such as Namibia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana. Empires also have histories that date back to maritime commerce and the making of the modern world. In in this dissertation I turn to Cape Town to examine the ways in which this long history of empire gradually formed the grammars of belonging in South Africa and the Atlantic world. Black intellectuals in South Africa during the early twentieth century had their investments in empire but theirs was a struggle to wrestle its grammars into a form that included blackness in its regime of belonging. It was especially after the First World War that these intellectuals sought to write themselves and the colonized masses of the world into an alternative grammar of sovereignty. I demonstrate in this dissertation that these intellectuals were far from mimic men and women; they were involved in a dialogue of reshaping what it meant to belong in the world after empire. !vi Table of Contents Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii Abstract v Table of Contents vi Introduction: The Violence of Belonging 1 Chapter I: “to see us as we see ourselves:” 27 John Tengo Jabavu, Empire, Colonial Belonging and the Public Sphere” Chapter II: Cape Town and the Black Modern 71 Chapter III: Black Cosmopolitans in Cape Town 107 Chapter IV: “A Home-Made Empire:” Race, Nation and Diaspora 150 in the Making of the Union of South Africa Conclusion: “1936 - Fascism and the End of Liberal Citizenship” 199 Bibliography: 204 !1 Introduction: The Violence of Belonging A Saturday evening, dark like any other, settles to a chilling stillness as you unleash the chain to the gate to park the car. This is an old ritual by now. Simulating calmness, you lax your shoulders, lean a little further in, breathing evenly and turning your head to surveil the surrounds, slip the key into the lock - almost always locked from the inside - and feel the unraveling of metal from metal. Beyond the gate there lies another held shut by a pair of bricks. These you kick aside and let the inner gate gently swing itself open. The bricks, trusted props, make their return to hold the gate open. You turn around and walk assuredly toward the car. The only noise that cuts the air is the song of the trees whispering the night. Halfway there. This, this is a different night. The trees that so often resemble miniature people, a soft choir of a silhouette in the distance, sing the taste for blood. There are shadows ap- proaching. Shadows of people holding hands and hoisting weapons of famished rage. You are the only one on this lonely street. You are the only one who will taste this rage. The calm gives to fear. The night is hungry and the people who had turned their burning tires and machetes against those deemed outsider flesh are fast approaching; a silent mob. You were born here, but will they know that? You are the only one on the street. What will it matter? You are seized by panic. As your senses spiral into uncontrollable fear you head back to the outer gate, abandoning the last ritual of return midway. Barely locking the gate and the silent silhouettes imminent, you dash into the car and drive toward a safe distance. You end up in your friend’s apartment in Melville halfway across town. She re- ceives you in the dead of night, fearing for your life. You settle yourself down and finally story opens up what has been. There was nothing different in the streets barely an hour before. It narrowed to the same church-end that you know. The trees inched ever closer to each other and at times merged into the form of crowds scattered in the distance. In any other night they would have been trees leaning into each other in a narrowing street. The violent gestalt that wrenched you so abruptly out of normalcy was a hallucination. Earlier that day you marched the streets of Johannesburg with a few thousand others, denouncing the theatre of violence that turned some into outsiders marked for expulsion. The new diasporas of Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Nigeria, Kenya and other na- tions had existed in an uncomfortable tangle of postcoloniality with the diminishing ro- mance of Apartheid’s end. They were deterritorialized Africans without citizenship. They were guests. And guests live on borrowed time and a hospitality that is tenuous and con- tingent. Then the patience of those who belonged ran out on them. The guests were making new homes. They were making new lives amidst the waning euphoria of the new South Africa. Some had even married “our” women. The boundary between those who belonged and those who endured their hospitality was becoming a blur. In an uncanny way fixed and emergent postcolonialities were colliding. The specter of “failed African states” was breeding their contagion into the “rainbow nation.” South Africa was being swamped by Africans! To preserve the purity of the precarity of those who belonged “the Africans” had to be dealt with. Then there came the explosion. People were pursued, !2 rounded up and asked to provide proof of being South African. Those who failed the test of belonging were thrown out of their homes and beaten. Some homes were burnt. Some people were hacked. Some were burnt and left, like the said sell-outs of Apartheid’s nadir, languishing in flames long enough to perish. It happened so suddenly for you. The Zim- babwean neighbors who came and asked to leave their furniture and belongings at your home for a few days wore faces of the terrified and shameful. They were not victims of crime or anything of the sort. Their shame was not to belong or posses the skill to make convincing appearances. Their belongings were safe but, now driven to a fugitive exis- tence, where would they go if the night came for them? In the days you and your family held these belongings the violence of belonging became apparent. You were inviolable because the colonial borders that made South Africa almost a century before gave you the privilege of citizenship after Apartheid’s demise. You carry that uncanny passage of time in you. It is now a way of seeing the limits of citizenship. Some years after the autumn of 2008 you will learn that of the people who were assaulted many were in fact South African. They were either too dark in complex- ion, belonged to suspect ‘ethnicities’ or spoke one of the less favored languages to pass for ‘real’ citizens. Their likeness to ‘Africans’ was often the telling difference. Belonging is skin deep. That quiet evening of the march carried with it some bitter lessons. Before you turned that last corner in your drive home, flames licked the sky in a near distant settle- ment of shacks. You wondered then, were people burning too? Your strange hallucination came after this. Perhaps the scenes that had changed the color of the television screen and newspapers headlines leapt uncontrollably out of your mind now that you were under the cover of darkness. Perhaps, after a day of moving in a crowd, you could only see in crowds. It matters little. The uncanny gift of that hallucination - now that you sit and re- flect from the luxury of gentrified Harlem in America’s “Empire State” - is knowing how deadly the grammar of belonging can become. Discordant Postcolonialities Empire Unbound: Imperial Liberalism, Race and Diaspora in the Making of South Africa rep- resents my attempts at working through the political unconscious of the events and en- tanglements that I have briefly sketched above. In May of 2008 there erupted a series of expulsions of ‘foreigners’ in various parts of South Africa. The attacks of 2008 which in- cluded “the murder, rape, and looting directed at bodies and belongings of non-South Africans” had, by the beginning of June, left more than 60 people dead.1 It was later con- firmed that about a third of these people were South African. In the midst of discussions about the violence something of a clear consensus emerged that what had transpired owed itself to the xenophobia of some South Africans. For some, such as Thabo Mbeki, then the country’s president, xenophobia talk masked the actions of “people who acted 1 Eric Worby, Shireen Hassim and Tawana Kupe, “Introduction: Facing the Other at the Gates of Democracy” in Go Home or Die Here, (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2008), pg. 1.