Princess Emma Sandile – an important book that illustrates the deep roots of oppression and exploitation – IOL

By Lekgantshi Console Tleane

One of the major weaknesses of post-structuralism as a school of thought and methodical frame is its rejection of dialectical thinking. The latter focuses on contradictions and sometimes even the antagonisms between phenomena.

Dialectical thinking would therefore see phenomena for what it is, in its simplest representation. Post-structural scholars often endeavour to excavate more issues or use analytical approaches that may in effect obscure that which should be plain to see.

In Black Womanism in South Africa: Princess Emma Sandile, the eminent scholar Janet Hodgson unearths data about the princess that could only be accomplished through painstaking archival study that traversed different collections locally and some in Britain. It also involved an examination of the ways of life of the people of the Eastern Cape and oral history.

Born during the early 1840s, Princess Emma, whose African name is not known, was the daughter of Mgolombane Sandile, a Warrior King who led his people during the Frontier Wars against British occupation and aggression.

To understand the conditions under which Emma was raised, it must be remembered that the year 1820 saw the arrival of the British Settlers in the latter-day Eastern Cape. This was therefore a period of land annexation by the British, consolidating their early conquest in 1815; taking over from the Dutch who had in turn conquered the land in 1652.

Sandile would be arrested in 1841 after the wars of resistance against the British. Defeated, he agreed for his daughter to be taken to what would be known as Zonnebloem College in Cape Town, established for the education of the children of indigenous leaders (so-called Chiefs) under the British colonial system.

Inducting the children of the indigenous leaders into the Western education system formed part of the British colonial strategy which differed from that of the French and Portuguese on the African continent.

Whereas, the French sought to assimilate Africans and turn them into dark French men and women, and the Portuguese sought to destroy and adulterate and finally integrate so-called detribalised Africans into Portuguese society, the British opted for indirect rule by assimilating some of the indigenous leaders who would become their proxies in the economic exploitation of the land.

This would be achieved through inculcation of Western education on the children of these leaders, and at times the leaders themselves, while allowing them to still live their so-called traditional lifestyles.

Zonnebloem College was built by the British colonial government led by George Grey. It was however administered by the Church of England through the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Lands. Emma was baptised a year-and-a-half after arriving at the college.

What was ostensibly an offer to educate the children of leaders was in fact a broader strategy to assimilate them into the colonial ways of life; teaching them that their own cultures were inferior to that of the colonists.

It is here that the role of the church as a handmaiden of colonialism became clearly pronounced. Not only did the church collaborate with colonial powers by blessing conquest, it participated actively in colonising the minds of indigenous peoples throughout the world through missionary educational establishments.

There may be those who may want to argue that these establishments did produce the early African intellectuals such as Tiyo Soga and many others who went on to articulate early Africanist thought. That should not however take away sharp criticism against the churchs complicity in colonial conquest, whose ramifications we continue to live with, to this day.

Apart from Governor Grey, another central figure in the formative years of Emma within a colonial setting was the Anglican Bishop of Cape Town at the time, Robert Grey.

Wanting to return home in the Eastern Cape, Emma was prohibited by Governor Grey who feared that she would be married to a non-Christian King. Instead, and clearly in an attempt to appease her, Grey gave her a farm in the Eastern Cape, ostensibly to cover the costs for her schooling.

This has led to the view that Emma was the first black woman to own land. What escapes historians is that the very act of giving Emma a farm and celebrating her as the first black woman to own land is an insult to black people whose land was forcibly annexed over time through colonial land dispossession.

This is historical negationism at its most insulting. That which was annexed through force cannot and should never be celebrated as a generous gift and achievement when it is given back to one whose people were conquered.

Eventually returning to the Eastern Cape, Emmas fate turned into a struggle between his father, Sandile, and Bishop Grey. Sandile wanted his daughter to marry King Gecelo but Bishop Grey opposed that, and instead, wanted her to be married to Ngangelizwe, who was viewed by Grey to be open to Christian persuasion.

The marriage did not take place. From then on Emmas life became a story of twists and turns. She would stay with, as well as associate with different colonist families, being assimilated into a Christianised Western way of life while longing for her African roots.

The issue around the planned marriages that King Sandile wished for his daughter to enter into should not only be the correctness, or not, of a patriarchal society imposing certain decisions upon women. Black women and youth have proven over time to be capable of initiating and advancing organic resistance against archaic patriarchal practices of treating black women as inferior beings whose lives must be decided upon by men.

At issue, is the ubiquity of whiteness, then in the form of Bishop Grey, wanting to impose his will on who Emma could marry, and even now, when black people are not allowed the space to address certain aspects of their cultural practices, which may be outdated, without the self-arrogated tutelage and say so of whiteness.

Emma went on to become a teacher and eventually got married to another of the Abathembu Kings, Stokwe Ndlela, who was eventually killed by the British during the revolt of 1881. She inherited Stokwes farm, which would later become the subject of legal contests right into the1980s. Although her exact date of death and place of burial are not known, it is estimated that she died circa 1893, and was survived by four daughters and a son.

Although not focused sharply on colonial conquest, and rather, highlighting the quest of one woman to manage the contradictions between her African traditions and an imposed Christianised Western culture, Black Womanism in South Africa: Princess Emma Sandile, is an important book that illustrates the deep roots of oppression and exploitation.

Other historians whose focus is on conquest and those employing materialist conceptions may well expand on the timelines and themes that Hodgson has ably outlined.

Black Womanism in South Africa: Princess Emma Sandile is published by Best Red (imprint of HSRC Press) and is available from bookstores and online outlets. Prices range between R199 to R239.

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Princess Emma Sandile - an important book that illustrates the deep roots of oppression and exploitation - IOL