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Donald Moodie: South Africa's Pioneer Oral Historian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

V.C. Malherbe
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Extract

In “Donald Moodie and the Origins of South African Historiography,” Robert Ross provides an illuminating account of the political agenda which drove Moodie's impressive labor of archival research, transcription, and translation to produce The Record—a title which, abbreviated in this fashion as it normally is, neatly establishes the aura of neutrality which he intended for his compilation of documents. Sections of The Record appeared in print between 1838 and 1841. A decade earlier Moodie had begun to assume the mantle of historian, but his activities then are little known. It appears also that his motives were somewhat different from those behind the later crusade. At a time when the social sciences were embryonic, and Cape historiography was still undeveloped, Moodie's interest was engaged by the relations subsisting between the indigenes and colonists. As investigator he employed certain methods of the fieldworker, notably the oral interview.

Moodie has attracted a novelist, but not yet a biographer. In what has been published concerning him thus far, the man remains elusive. The entry in the Dictionary of South African Biography was prepared by the chief archivist of Natal and describes in a few short paragraphs his life before The Record and his transfer to that colony in 1845. Born in the Orkney Islands in 1794, Moodie entered the Royal Navy in 1808. A lieutenant at the time of his retirement on half pay in 1816, he left for India in 1820 but remained instead at the Cape, where his brothers Benjamin and John had settled. The next fifteen or so years, which the DSAB dispatches in a few lines, is the period which is of interest here. During that time he married Sophia Pigot and experienced bouts of insecurity respecting employment—aspects of his personal life with some relevance for the course of action he pursued.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 25 , 1998 , pp. 171 - 197
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1998

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References

1 Ross, Robert, Beyond the Pale: Essays on the History of Colonial South Africa (Hanover, 1993).Google Scholar The full title of Moodie's production is: The Record, or a Series of Official Papers Relative to the Condition and Treatment of the Native Tribes of South Africa (Cape Town, 1960).Google Scholar

2 Ross, , “Donald Moodie,” 193.Google Scholar See also Bank, Andrew, “The Great Debate and the Origins of South African Historiography,” JAH, 38 (1997), 261–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Fitzroy's, V.M. historical novel, Dark Bright Land (Cape Town, 1955)Google Scholar, portrays several South African families of which Donald Moodie and Sophia Pigot Moodie were progenitors. It is intriguing, though probably of no significance, that Moodie was the great-grandfather of James Stuart, whose fame rests on his many interviews with Zulu and other informants in Natal between 1897 and 1924. Stuart, like Moodie, was moved by strong political views, see Wright, John, “Making the James Stuart Archive,” HA, 23 (1996), 333–50.Google Scholar

4 Natal began as a British colony. With union in 1910 it became one of four provinces. It is now one of nine provinces, and renamed KwaZulu-Natal.

5 de Kock, W.J. and Kruger, D.W. eds, Dictionary of South African Biography [DSAB] (Cape Town, 1972), 2:488–91.Google Scholar

6 Rainier's account of Moodie's career between 1825 and the appearance of The Record is acknowledged to be sketchy, Rainier, Margaret ed., The Journals of Sophia Pigot, 1819-1821 (Cape Town, 1974), 103–06.Google ScholarRoss, , “Donald Moodie,” 196Google Scholar, also finds details respecting his early years at the Cape to be scarce.

7 The term Khoisan derives from Khoikhoi (“Hottentots”) and San (“Bushmen”) and is used to refer to both groups together.

8 Cape Archives (hereafter CA), CO 5174, Judicial Letter Book, 9/9/1828-29/10/ 1830, Bell-Moodie, 5/2/1829, 101; CO 2712, Albany and Somerset, No. 42, Moodie-Bell, 13/2/1829, 164-66 and No. 49, Moodie-Bell, 20/2/1829, 186-87. The importance of Albany was recognized also by the fact that the magistrate's salary there (and in Stellenbosch) was £500 per annum and only £300 in the other districts, Theal, George McCall, History of South Africa from 1795 to 1872 (London, 1915), 5:493.Google Scholar The English appointee was W. Waddel.

9 These incidents are explored more fully in my dissertation. “The Cape Khoisan in the Eastern Districts of the Colony Before and After Ordinance 50 of 1828, ca.1820-1835.” See also Malherbe, V.C., “Colonial Justice and the Khoisan in the Immediate Aftermath of Ordinance 50 of 1828: Denouement at Uitenhage,” Kronos, 24 (1997), 77–90.Google Scholar The Dutch “boer” (farmer) was often rendered as “boor.”

10 Bannister could have learned of them at Bethelsdorp, where he was helping the Khoisan prepare memorials with respect to land and other matters, or through legal channels in the village.

11 Important documents respecting these cases may be found in CA, 1/Uitenhage [UIT] 16/58 and also CO 3941, Memorials, No. 49, Bannister Papers. See also Bannister's, Humane Policy; or Justice to the Aborigines of New Settlements (London, 1830), 28–33.Google Scholar

12 CA, CO 5174, Judicial Letter Book, Bell-Moodie, 13/3/1829 and 20/3/1829, 135, 141-42.

13 South African Commercial Advertiser [SACA], “Inquiry into the Conduct of a Magistrate” by a Uitenhage Correspondent, 11/4/1829 and Uitenhage, 22/8/1829. Moodie's findings became official after they were endorsed by the attorney-general.

14 CA, CO 2710, Uitenhage and George, 1829, Moodie's Report, 24/4/1829, 555-78 (also in this volume: Moodie-Bell, 4/4/1829; Moodie-Bell, 10/4/1829, and the enclosures with these letters and with the report); CO 5174, Bell-Moodie, 22/5/1829, 179-80. The attorney-general's comments are in CO 372, Letters Received, 1829, Oliphant-Bell, 17/6/1829, 552-54.

15 CA, CO 2713, Albany and Somerset, No. 133, Acting Civil Commissioner Moodie-Bell, 27/11/1829. On the frontier, districts were linked under a single civil commissioner: Uitenhage with George, Graaff-Reinet with Beaufort, Albany with Somerset.

16 For Moodie's place with liberals among the British settlers see Bank, “Great Debate.”

17 British Parliamentary Papers [BPP], “Papers Relative to the Condition and Treatment of the Native Inhabitants of Southern Africa within the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope or beyond the Frontier of that Colony, Pt. I, Hottentots and Bosjesmen; Caffres; Griquas,” 18/3/1835, No. 19, Moodie-Gregory, 6/12/1823, 175-76. An earlier communication is referred to in this letter.

18 A further example of his early ‘liberalism’ is found in his “Notes of a Tour to the Northern Frontier,” Aug. 1834, in CA, CO 429, where he wrote: “The natives can know us only as an usurping and unjust people, for at all the points at which we come into contact with them, they see no one to lohom they can appeal.” (emphasis in original). This remark needs to be considered in the light of his simultaneous advice to extend British jurisdiction in the form of new magistracies.

19 Twenty-six fat volumes of “Moodie Papers” are in the Cape Archives: See VC 864-889.

20 CA, VC 888, Moodie Papers. Moodie was living in Graaff-Reinet at the time, where he had moved after succeeding his late father-in-law George Pigot as Protector of Slaves.

21 Evidence for the time of writing is found where Moodie says” “I observe that Andries Stoffel, together with another Caffre… are about to be taken to England’, “Social Position of the Coloured Classes,” 19. The LMS party left the Cape in February 1836.

22 See especially chapter 4 in Bank, Andrew, “Liberals and their Enemies: Racial Ideology of the Cape of Good Hope, 1820 to 1850” (PhD., Cambridge, 1995).Google Scholar

23 See Ross, Robert, “Paternalism, Patriarchy and Afrikaans,” South African Historical Journal, no. 32 (May 1995), 43–44Google Scholar; Malherbe, V.C., “The Khoi Captains in the Third Frontier War” in Newton-King, Susan and Malherbe, V.C., The Khoikhoi Rebellion in the Eastern Cape (1799-1803) University of Cape Town: Centre for African Studies, Communications No. 5 (1981), 123.Google Scholar

24 “Mr. Roselt's explanation in the prosecution of the three criminal cases, Niekerk, Scheepers, & Jacob Jacobs,” in CA, 1/UIT 16/58, J.J.F. Roselt, 8/4/1829, 85 (emphasis in original).

25 CA, CO 2713, No. 133, Moodie-Bell, 27/11 /1829, 563.

26 Philip, who was superintendent of the London Missionary Society at the Cape, had mounted a campaign to secure equal rights for the Khoisan and others.

27 Ross, , “Donald Moodie,” 193Google Scholar, cites Moodie's oath, designed “to emphasize his official, neutral status” in the preparation of The Record.

28 For these distinctions, see Manson, A., Cachalia, D., and Sideris, C., “Oral History Speaks Out,” Social Dynamics, 11 (1985), 1–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Ibid., 3.

30 “Oral history” is construed here as by and large distinct from “oral tradition” in that it consists of “testimony directly experienced by the informant;” see ibid., 1.

31 Spindel, Donna J., “Assessing Memory: Twentieth-Century Slave Narratives Reconsidered,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 27 (1996), 249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 CA, CO 2710, Moodie's cross-examination of Jacob Jacobs on 30/3/1829, at Bethelsdorp, 395. This excerpt appears in context below.

33 Bannister had returned to Cape Town by this time. Resident Magistrate Aspeling asked that he and two others be cross-examined there, CA, CO 2710, 547-49.

34 CA, CO 2710, Moodie-Bell, 4/4/1829, 326. More gaps were filled by civil commissioner J.W. van der Riet of Uitenhage and George (also a JP) who carried out some interviews.

35 It is not clear whether Read accompanied Moodie on his rounds or simply happened to be at the woodcutters' camp where the Khoisan families were objects of the LMS missionaries' pastoral care.

36 After his trial, Scheepers had requested Swan to confirm his holdings. Moreover, he and other farmers in the ward had promptly moved to acquire the still unallocated tracts in their own names.

37 For reasons which are unclear, only some of these “depositions” were included in the April report. The rest were forwarded with Moodie's November report on “the Hottentot race.”

38 Moodie also succeeded in exposing the district surgeon's negligence and callousness, most damningly in Platje's case.

39 CA, CO 2713, No. 133, Moodie-Bell, 27/11/1829, 563. This collection consists mainly of Albany material but includes two or three Uitenhage interviews.

40 Dictionary of South African Biography, 2:489.Google Scholar Payment was justified as covering the time he needed to complete his final report as Slave Protector.

41 CA, VC 874, Statement of the Hottentot Platje Zwartland at Graaff-Reinet, 30/3/1836.

42 SACA, 6/7/1836.

43 CA, CO 2710, enclosed in Moodie-Bell, 4/4/1829.

44 Dutch currency remained in circulation after British currency was introduced at the Cape. There were 8 skillings to a rixdollar. A skilling was equated with sixpence at the time of the first British occupation in 1795 (Rds. 1 = 4/-). By the 1820s the rixdollar had depreciated to 1/6 (1 skilling = 2 1/4 pence). The 4 skillings which Platje was owed was therefore equivalent to ninepence. See Arndt, E.H.D., Banking and Currency Development in South Africa, 1652-1927 (Cape Town, 1928), 8, 15, 38–40.Google Scholar

45 Stoffel, who saw Platje again the day after the assault, testified that he could not “walk, sit, or lie down” from pain. He was present also at the Under Bushman's River ward when Moodie called there; see below.

46 A strong term of abuse.

47 Two not previously interrogated were Hendrik Hatha (“Hatta”), a prominent London Society convert, and Mrs Robson, wife of the head missionary at Bethelsdorp. Moodie also re-examined Boesac Trompetter, who had been herdsman to former landdrost J.G. Cuyler and Andries Stoffel, the only witness to have seen Platje immediately before and soon after the assault.

48 The Gonaqua were of mixed Khoikhoi-Xhosa ancestry, with links to both communities linguistically and socially.

49 William McLuckie came to the Cape under indenture to Benjamin Moodie, Donald Moodie's elder brother, in 1817 and was employed chopping wood. On completion of his indenture he became a trader and later was “one of the first white men in the Transvaal”: Philip, Peter, British Residents at the Cape, 1795-1819 (Cape Town, 1981), 258.Google Scholar McLuckie was absent on a trading trip when wanted as a witness at the Jacobs trial.

50 CO, CA 2713, enclosed in No. 133, Moodie-Bell, 27/11/1829, 565-68. The field cornet of Under Bushman's River ward was Carel Valentyn Buchner, who resided on the Quagga Flats.

51 CA, CO 2713, enclosed in No. 133, Moodie-Bell, 27/11/1829, 571-75. The farm of Coenraad Frederik Scheepers, a relative of Johannes Marthinus, was “surrounded on three parts with Government Lands:” 1/UIT 14/45, No. 305.

52 Cobus Boesack/Boezak was a wellknown elephant hunter and a prominent member of the LMS institution, Theopolis, in Albany.

53 A Johannes (“Hans”) Knoetze(n) was born on 14 February 1773 according to de Villiers, C.C. and Pama, C. eds, Geslagregisters van die Ou Kaapse Families (Cape Town, 1966), I.Google Scholar

54 CA, CO 2713, enclosed in No. 133, Moodie-Bell, 27/11/1829, 576-78. For Paul Keteldas see Sales, Jane, Mission Stations and the Coloured Communities of the Eastern Cape 1800-1852 (Cape Town, 1975), 124Google Scholar; V.C. Malherbe, “The Cape Khoisan in the Eastern Districts of the Colony,” chapter 9.

55 Hankey was an offshoot of Bethelsdorp and served as a base for woodcutters in the Tzitzikamma forests.

56 Prins Boosman had entered Bethelsdorp on 13 October 1806, CA, J 395, “Opgaafrollen, Exhibiting the name, quality, occupations, &c of the Hottentots and some other nations belonging to the Missionary Institution, at Bethelsdorp on the 8th of April 1809.” Here “Quality” referred to “nation,” for example, “Hottentot,” “Gonah,” and “Bushman.”

57 Andries Stoffel was one of five representatives of the London Missionary Society at the Cape who testified before the House of Commons Select Committee on Aborigines in 1836: See Dictionary of South African Biography, 4:623–25.Google Scholar

58 CA, CO 2713, No. 133, Moodie-Bell, 27/11/1829.

59 This point is one of several in this testimony which aimed to promote a vagrant act, to curb the freedom of movement enjoyed by the Khoisan as a result of Ordinance 50.

60 An LMS institution in Albany District.

61 A tax levied on livestock and crop production.

62 Fortuin was among the early settlers of this region, which was earmarked in 1829 for occupation by Khoisan and Bastards.

63 CA, VC 874, Moodie Papers.

64 Problems stemming from age and possible memory impairment are the chief concern of Spindel, , “Assessing Memory,” 247–61.Google Scholar

65 CA, VC 888, “Social Position of the Colored Classes,” 15.

66 He describes these interrogations in CA, VC 888, “Social Position,” 19, for the quotation.

67 CA, VC 888, “Social Position,” 11. For his ongoing commitment to the project see Moodie, Donald, South African Annals: Origin of the Bushmen (Cape Town, 1855).Google Scholar

68 CA, VC 888, “Social Position,” 12. “Christians” is equated here with colonists. It is not clear if Moodie wrote this passage before or after the Zwartland interview.

69 Burchell, William J., Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa (2 vols.: London, 1824), 2:115-16, 128, 291, 299, 330–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 Snow Mountain, near the village of Graaff-Reinet.

71 Commando: an armed, mounted force of burghers (citizens) and their servants.

72 Moodie assumed correctly that Burchell was meant, but seems not to have consulted his travel narrative. “Bloomzoeker” refers to his botanical pursuits.

73 Apparently a reference to Field Commandant Tjaart van der Walt who was killed in action in 1802, during the Khoikhoi Rebellion (1799-1803), see Dictionary of South African Biography, 1:820–22.Google Scholar

74 H.C.D. Maynier filled several offices in Graaff-Reinet District between 1789 and 1802.

75 Two interviews conducted in 1836 with the Khoi, Bretagne Jantjes and Klaas Klassen, which are among the papers of the London Society missionary Kitchingman, bear Moodie's stamp but are not attributed to him: See Brenthurst Library, Johannesburg: J. Kitchingman. Papers. MS.183/5/50-51.