A trip into the desert of organised forgetting
A celebrated photographer has turned his lens on an area rich in history, writes Tymon Smith
HISTORIAN Jeff Peires, whose book The Dead Will Arise, a history of the prophetess Nongqawuse and the cattle killings of 1856-57 won the 1990 Alan Paton Award, once wrote in a review of the massive popular history Frontiers by Noel Mostert that the history of the Eastern Cape had been largely ignored because “there are too many obscure people, too many obscure places, too long a succession of obscure incidents”.
It is this region’s history — and particularly that of the 100 years of wars, from 1779 to 1879, between the Xhosa, the Boers and the British — that piqued the curiosity of photographer Cedric Nunn. His exhibition, Unsettled, attempts to highlight some of the characters, locations and battles in an effort to bring them out of obscurity and examine the way in which one of South Africa’s most significant historical periods still has resonance in the area.
Nunn, who was born in KwaZulu-Natal and has a photographic career that spans 30 years, has always seen himself as a photographer “committed to contributing to social change that will leave a positive legacy for the children of Africa”.
He says he initially felt that “it was an idea that excited me but I wasn’t at all certain that I was going to be able to make it work”.
Thanks to participation in a French South Africa season and then a Mellon grant from Rhodes University, Nunn was able to spend three months in the Eastern Cape exploring areas of significance to the story of the Frontier Wars.
This is his first landscape-based project and he admits that “landscape is difficult when you’re not a landscape photographer. Most of it is locations that are obscure, even to this day. They are not etched in anybody’s consciousness or imagination.”
Nunn travelled from Peddie to King William’s Town, Grahamstown, KwaNdlambe and the forgotten garrison town of Theophilus — a mixed community of Khoi and Xhosa razed to the ground in reaction to protests against the British, now a pile of rubble and ruins overgrown by trees and bushes.
In silent, contemplative black and white photographs taken on a 35mm Leica, Nunn tries to show “how events that took place 200 years ago play out today. I think that’s an interesting phenomenon — to imagine what it could have been and then see where that takes you today.”
Nunn’s research showed that most people, even those in the Eastern Cape, were as ignorant or vague about this period as he had once been. He sees this as the result of what Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano called “the historical desert of organised forgetting”.
“For me,” says Nunn, “historical forgetting is key to understanding. We’ve been organ- ised to forget the significance and importance of this story.
“We’ve been led to see the Anglo-Zulu War as far more momentous when that was a footnote in the history of the Frontier Wars at their conclusion.
“The Zulus were sorted out in three months in the same year as the Frontier Wars ended.”
In some places, monuments have been erected to people and events significant to the history of the period, but they are often small or falling apart or celebratory of mythologised British figures such as Elizabeth Salt, who navigated an army of Xhosa warriors to bring news of a coming attack to the people of Grahamstown.
Nunn notes with a twinkle in his eye that the Salt story fails to mention that in that period the Xhosa had a policy of not attacking women or children.
The memorial to the battle of Egazini outside Grahamstown “begins to tell a story. It’s been vandalised and poorly built and ill-thought-out and it’s shocked me to see how we don’t take our history as seriously as we should,” says Nunn.
One of the aspects of the story that Nunn has chosen to highlight is the divisions among Xhosas at the time and how these persist in the modern Eastern Cape.
The Mfengu, for instance, were co-opted by the British and were the first beneficiaries of a mission education in places such as Fingo. They became administrators of hospitals and principals of schools.
The Ndhlambe, whose great kraal is now the site of the Grahamstown Cathedral, were firm resisters against the British; they still live in poverty in overcrowded areas blighted by soil erosion.
The images often require lengthy captions in order to draw attention to why Nunn has chosen to photograph the places he has, and they reflect his often rightful indignation at how the more things have supposedly changed, the more they have remained the same, or deteriorated.
He is not sure how successful he has been in achieving his aims, but hopes he has been able to show that in post-apartheid South Africa, the neglect of this vast area shows that “we have made compromises that don’t recognise grave injustices”.
Says Nunn: “To continue with scars as deep as these and think they will just heal themselves is untenable. Redress is needed and under the present dispensation there will never be redress.
“I don’t have the answers as to how we do that, but I am saying that the only way that answers can begin to emerge is when there’s a full awareness and recognition of that.”
The exhibition Unsettled: One Hundred Years of Resistance by Xhosa against Boer and British, is at the Wits Art Gallery until April 12. Nunn will give a public lecture at the museum on March 25 at 6.30pm
I try to show how events that took place 200 years ago play out today We have made compromises that don’t recognise grave injustices. To continue with scars as deep as these and think they will just heal themselves is untenable