Divided by the Word: Colonial Encounters and the Remaking of Zulu and Xhosa Identities by Jochen S. Arndt

Abstract

In Divided by the Word, Arndt sets out “to demonstrate when, how, and why language-based notions of Zuluness and Xhosaness first emerged and then entrenched themselves in the consciousness of the region’s population” (8). In addition to providing a rich history of the development of the two most common African languages in South Africa (isiZulu and isiXhosa), Arndt also provides a critical account of the flattening of South African language cultures as colonial interlocutors attempted to make sense of the kaleidoscope of sociolinguistic cultures in what we now know as the Republic of South Africa. Citing the devastating violence of transition-era South Africa, Arndt aims to find explanations for the crystallization of these once amorphous identities through historical interrogation into the divides between the Xhosa and Zulu that came to a head in the violence of the 1980s and 1990s: “To historicize the language-based Zulu–Xhosa divide properly, however, I refrain from imposing the divide on the past. Rather, I use the past to explain the emergence of the divide” (13). Drawing from a diverse documentary source base integrating collections held in the United States, South Africa, and Europe (as well as interviews with members of the AmaHlubi National Working Committee and IsiHlubi Language Board), Arndt’s study ably combines not only different types of historical evidence but also brings insights from other disciplines to shed new light on topics with which historians and scholars of South Africa have grappled in various ways for two centuries. For example, in Chapter 1, Arndt skillfully uses historical linguistics, archaeology, and history to highlight multiple perspectives on linguistic divisions prior to 1800. Instead of privileging the phenomena of encounter and interpretation between Europeans and Africans, this chapter highlights how interactions between different African groups in the region shifted both the linguistic and the socio-political dynamics within the region. Additionally, his use of American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions records in Chapters 5 and 6 adds significantly to preexisting studies of American–Zulu exchange by scholars like Vinson and Carton. Arndt contributes new insights into the role of missionary figures in the promotion of a “single literary language” of Zuluness over the multiple coastal languages that proliferated in the mid-nineteenth century by highlighting, through deep reading against the grain, how missionary figures saw utility in upholding certain linguistic traditions over others. Throughout these chapters, Arndt’s critical examination of the