The modification of the Indo-Black connection in South Africa through a reading of Davidson Don...

The modification of the Indo-Black connection in South Africa through a reading of Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu‟s

travelogue: E-Indiya Nase East Africa: Uhambo lomNgqika eMpumalanga (1951).

ESSAY: DAVIDSON DON TENGO JABAVU TRAVELS TO INDIA 1 | P a g e Themba Ziphilele Moyake

Full title · E-Indiya Nase East Africa: Uhambo lomNgqika eMpumalanga)

Author · Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu

Type of work (Genre) · Travelogue: Politics, travel, geography, Pacifism, Indian Ocean

historiography

Language · Xhosa – Universalizing of Xhosa – English

Time and place written · 1949 - Whilst travelling between East Africa and India.

Date of first publication · First published and printed by Lovedale Press in 1951

Publisher · Lovedale Press (It could be useful to know the number of travelogues printed and

what their distribution gamut was in order to advocate for the proposition of the paper)

Tone · Adventurous, reflective, comparative, intrigued/captivated account or writing.

Setting (time) · mid-20th

century (1949 )

Setting (place) · South Africa, East Africa, and India.

Subject · The subject of the text is the author himself (i.e. Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu)

Major occurance · Reaching India and being at the World Pacifist Conference.

Rising action · The exposition of Jabavu‟s travels from South Africa to East Africa and then on

towards India.

Themes · Islands, Sea, Oceanography, Discourses on the Indian Ocean, Travel, adventure,

suspense, mystery, politics, ethnicity, language, modernity, reshaping and shifting conceptions,

geography, theosophy, intersecting networks, satyagraha, ahimsa, intellectual culture, et al.

Symbols · The vessel called the Karanj, the ocean, the islands (Seychelles, Maldive and the

Laccadive islands), buffalos, monkeys, ghandi-cap, et al.

Notable figures for long essay · Manilal Ghandi, Rev. Michael Scott (South African), C.F

Andrews1 (supported Ghandi in South Africa), Rabrindanath Tagore (literary coincidence).

Foreshadowing · In the travelogue‟s prelude, the book introduces the estimated journey the

author has taken across the ocean and across the world to credit his travel to India as being

undertaken by a personage familiar to/with the nature of travelling and how that then can

determine how we read the text moving forward. That because Jabavu is used to travelling, his

work allows us to comfortably travel with a sojourner accustomed to the pattern and the life of

travelling.




Essay Title: The modification of the Indo-Black connection in South Africa through a reading of

Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu‟s travelogue: E-Indiya Nase East Africa: Uhambo lomNgqika

eMpumalanga (1951).




Introduction

According to Isabel Hofmeyr and Michelle Williams:

Despite centuries of interactions, Africa and India today remain largely sundered domains of analysis. Set

in relations of opposition by colonial rule and then by a Cold War Area studies map, „Africa‟ and

„India/South Asia‟ in the academy appear to have little to do with each other. When they are configured,

this configuration is usually characterized by uneasy stereotypes of extremity. On one side stand narratives

of shoulder-to-shoulder Bandung-style solidarity, especially apparent in accounts of Indian involvement in

the anti-apartheid movement. On the other are quasi-colonial views to be found in India of Africa as „the

dark continent‟, a view that draws implicitly on older ideas of civilisationism that rank „Indian‟ civilization

above that of „Africa‟ (Hofmeyr, 2007:61) These contrasting views offer a stark binary set of explanations,

with either too much solidarity on the one side or too little on the other. (Hofmeyr & Williams, 2011:4)

Given the latter, the essay will discuss the life of Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu (1885 – 1959) in

relation to his travels to India and East Africa via an interrogation that will largely centre its

reference on his travelogue: E-Indiya nase East Africa: Uhambo lomNgqika eMpumalanga

which was published by the Lovedale Press in 1951. Also, from the author‟s numerous

engagements with various Indian epistemologies, an attempt will be made to read into Africa and

India from a contemporary vista which does not view them as separate but as informing each

other in remarkable ways. The travelogue was written while Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu was on

an excursion to East Africa and India between 1949 and 1950. The author was on his way to the

Pacifist Conference2 in India as a result of an invitation sent to him by the Indian Congress. The

travelogue is allegorical for a number of trajectories that can be articulated for scholastic

interpretation and provides avenues for the ensuing microcosmic projections that coincide with a

generational zeitgeist of Xhosa Intellectualism which prominently manifested in the mid to late

19th

century into the early to mid 20th

century (S.E.K Mqhayi, 2009:v - vii)3 in at least one ethnic

paragon of South Africa‟s historical intellectual arena. Furthermore, D.D.T. Jabavu‟s travel to

East Africa and to India modifies old Area Studies Maps and further signifies a divergent4

pathway which opens up „neglected‟ trajectories for both the author and for later pedagogical

inquests into the socio-historical and intellectual significance of travels to India by Africans.

Consequently, a short introductory discussion of Jabavu‟s travel to India vis-à-vis his previous

travels to the West and Middle East will foreshadow the discussions contained herein to espouse

the idea of the author (traveler) as a trans-nationalistic subject who facilitates for the

modification of an Indo-Black connection5 in South Africa from a “universalistic vista”

6. That in

other words: Jabavu‟s travel to East Africa and then to India underscored and modified the

ideological and physical relationship between India and Africa, but more specifically: advocated

for the modification of an already existing Indo-Black culture in South Africa through a special

mode of writing: “writing between” (Courau, 2008:25).

The methodology of interpreting D.D.T. Jabavu from a universal vista or from „writing between‟

will be used to look at the significance the Xhosa language would then purchase – from this

position – beyond its loci and towards what seemingly is its being universalized by DDT Jabavu.




This argument will be further fostered by reading Jabavu in line with some notable Xhosa

intellectuals who wrote and published their works in isiXhosa to audiences who were not

primarily Xhosa but whose works were received internationally. The latter arguments will be

made only to espouse the aims of the paper: the attempt to evince how the isiXhosa orthography

further modified the Indo-Black relationship in South Africa and India.

Lastly, the paper will consider the author‟s perception of Indians from how he writes about them

on his travels to East Africa and then onto India. The reading of the travelogue here will consider

Jabavu‟s India-South Africa analogies, and what impact these had on modifying the Indo-Black

relationship in South Africa in the early to mid 20th

century.

The Universal Lives of Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu – Trans-nationalism and the Indo-

Black identity

“Jabavu is a particularly accessible subject, for he seemed to wear no mask, no public face for

the white world and private face for the black.” (Marks, 1986:2) That, and with a name7

allegorical for humanity and the intolerance of racial injustice “D.D.T. Jabavu fit very well the

model of the „New African‟ ”8 (Higgs, 1997:3) and was born (1885) at a time when “a few

African men could vote and the prospects for black equality with the ruling whites seemed

promising.” (Higgs, 1997:1) D.D.T. Jabavu‟s identity as a New African was a consequence of

the passing of Legislation at the Cape colony - earlier in the same century of his birth - which

later „freed‟ disenfrenchised blacks and provided them with voting rights: a legal privilege that

would inform Jabavu‟s entire life. The Cape‟s liberal milieu coupled with D.D.T. Jabavu‟s

cognisance of the manumission that led to it and “John Tengo Jabavu‟s (D.D.T Jabavu‟s father)

elite African position and his reputation as a renowned news editor of Imvo Zabantsundu9

(Native Opinion) provided the multinational references that would enable him to instill a world

view into Don Davidson Tengo Jabavu‟s life and his international accomplishments later on”

(Higgs, 1997:13). D.D.T. Jabavu‟s formatting years would further posit, in him, ideals to educate

the less prviliged and uneducated African – as this, according to Jabavu, would lead to the

development and the creation of equity between the African and the Whites in the country10

.

Further, education was very important to Jabavu (Higgs, 1997:3) because it shaped his „classic

liberal‟11

outlook and later contributed to what would grant his personage an all access pass into

several locations across the entire world.

Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu extensively travelled and wrote about his numerous travels to

different places across the world. However, it is with his pen-ultimate trip to East Africa and to

India that the paradigms of the discussions herein will be largely centred. The major concern

with Jabavu‟s travel to India is buttressed by studies that have sought to reconfigure the

perception of India from a [South] African perspective and contrarily from an Indian perspective.

The latter reconfiguration of oceanic historiographies owes itself to what has been dubbed the

resolution of the „one-way problem’: “Put briefly, studies tend to examine movement from India

to South Africa, without asking what implications this migration had back in India”. (Hofmeyr

& Williams, 2011:5).The reading of DDT Jabavu‟s travelogue: E-Indiya Nase East Africa




facilitates for a contemporary intepretation which is congruent with a reconfigured perspective of

the world which seeks to debunk historiographies of nationally informed Area Studies maps; and

it (the travelogue) makes the attempt to appease what contemporary anxieties around Indo-Black

connections may still exist by helping us gaze into the past to try and retrieve a better

understanding of the relationships between India and [South] Africa from both a [South] African

perspective and from an Indian perspective.

The Introduction (Intlayelelo) of the travelogue informs the reader of Jabavu‟s extensive

travelling:

“The author12

has travelled 400,000 miles of his life (of 65 years) and has visited many places in

this country and overseas. It is his first trip to India, since most of the places he had visited before

were towards the west, and he travelled along the Cape Coast. His first overseas trip was in 1903

when he went to study in England. He also went to Tuskegee, USA in 1912 before returning

home at the beginning of the German war in 1914. His second trip was in 1928 when he attended

a conference in Jerusalem. On his journey to Jersualem he went through Engalnd, France,

Switzerland, Italy, Egypt and the Palestine. His third trip was in 1931 to Buffalo, Niagra Falls –

USA where he attended a Christian youth conference. His fourth trip which went past England in

1937 to Philadelphia, USA where he attended a meeting. His fifth trip was in 1949 when he

visited India.” (Jabavu, 1959:1)

The life of Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu spans across several locations through the world. The

public lives13

(Higgs, 1997) locate D.D.T. Jabavu‟s identity as a transnational traveler who never

permanently emigrated to any of the worlds that he was exposed to as a result of extensive

travelling and yet who simultaneously belonged to several regions of the world.

His first and third trips as evinced above, between the years 1903 – 1914 and 1931 – 1937

respectively (Jabavu, 1959:2), position him in the diasporic framework of the Black Atlantic

whose historiography in the early to mid 17th

century (Fage, 1978:244) promulgates a discourse

documenting the forced migration of a plethora14

of African identities from several locations

across the African continent who were shipped to become slaves in the new world (Fage, 1978:

254) and whose movements cut across Europe, the West Indies and America. (Fage, 1978:244 -

262)

His second trip to Jerusalem (1928 – 1931) to attend a Conference on World Mission and

Evangelism – given his course through different places – locates the personage of Jabavu in a

framework coinciding with both – on the one hand; the ideological shifts in religion that had

occurred as a result of the end of the first World War and the rise of Socialism with the ensuing

theological-political debates spurned on by the advent of the Russian Revolution in 1918 – and;

on the other hand, although inconspicuously, the continuing Macedonian diaspora where ethnic

Macedonians - under Serbian autocracy and later: Yugoslavian rule - had to disperse to countries

like Germany, Italy, France, Canada, and the United States between 1901 until Macedonia‟s

Independence in 1991. (Hugh, 2000)




On his last trip, his previous travels across the Atlantic and the Macedonian diaspora or network

in Europe intersect with a third route which position his public life with yet another network: the

Omani trading route15

(Fage, 1978:246). Jabavu‟s previous travels to Europe and America and

then to the middle East position him inside a paragon of continually intersecting transnational

trajectories which demand that the interrogation of his travels to East Africa and India be

determined from a vista cognizant of a universalistic discourse of intersecting networks which

underpin his agency as a socio-political-theological-intellectual sojourner. The foreshadowing of

Jabavu‟s travel to India with both the Atlantic and the Macedonian diasporas is a cogent

framework of intersecting and shifting ideologies which needs to be entrenched into his travel

experience discourse – in the context of both the historiography encapsulating the early to mid

20th

century and within the context of the historiography that encapsulates the post World War II

era1 which saw the introduction of the Cold War era – before the paper can attempt to cast a

telling reading into Jabavu‟s travels to East Africa and then to India can be proposed.

In keeping with the latter proposition: of framing D.D.T Jabavu‟s travels with intersecting

transnational diasporas, the author himself, writes in the 2nd

person in reference to himself in

isiXhosa in E-Indiya Nase East Africa in the first chapter – as mentioned above - and

immediately introduces himself to the reader as a well travelled subject. Contextually, the act of

D.D.T. Jabavu writing about himself in the second person can be read into as a „nomadic‟ trope

that reinforces the idea of the peripatetic subject in so far as he is cognizant of his public lives,

acquired through extensive travelling, which predisposed him (Jabavu) to an idiosyncrasy akin to

that of a polymath. Writing in the 2nd

person allowed him to step outside of him-selves to write

about himself in the specific mapping of thoughts and experiences channeled towards

documenting the: South African, East African, littoral society islands, and Indian cultural

experiences he witnesses on his trip to India. Jabavu writing about himself in the 2nd

person also,

to a degree, evinces to the reader the manner of address the transnational subject chooses in order

to articulate his liminality or universal identity as he simultaneously chooses to use earlier

temporal experiences from different locations and spaces to articulate the, as yet „undefined‟,

present-continuous journey into the soon to be known-unknown world of India. In this sense,

Jabavu‟s travel experience to India is fraught with a sense of quasi-anxiety and concurrent

adventure because he has recollections of travelling and discovery. In the same way that the

sighting of Indians by South Africans is reflective of a feeling of quasi-anxiety and instantaneous

escapade which renders both the travelling subject and the indigenous subject with an

epistemology of transnationality (quasi-anxiety) at the point of their coming into contact with

each other. With this reading in mind, the peripatetic subject facilitates for the cultural

production16

that will occur at the point of his contact with the indigenous form that carries the

epistemology of India physically and intellectually. For instance, an early example from Uma

Dhupeli-Meshtrie‟s Ghandi’s Prisoner reveals that in 1896 when Ghandi was on his way to

1 Don Davidson Tengo Jabavu embarks on his travel to India four years after WWII.




South Africa the second time around returning with his family from India, he was aboard the

ship: the SS Courland which was not allowed into the harbor of Natal for fear that the passengers

(Indians) were carrying disease. (Uma, 2004:33) Furthermore, similar to Meshtrie‟s 1896

example, in Jabavu‟s travelogue: E-Indiya Nase East Africa - Jabavu experiences (1949) a

number of Indians who had to be vaccinated for Yellow Fever and small pox before departing for

India. (Jabavu D. D., 1959:4-5) The effect of transnationality pervades the intellectual terrain and

consequently affects the corporeal domain of the indigenous inhabitants of South Africa in ways

that make the Indo-Black relationship in South Africa at the time (1896 – 1949) carry quasi

anxieties when exposed to aspects of transnationality which carry disease and uncertainty.

Universalizing isiXhosa: modifying the Indo-Black landscape

Jabavu‟s travels are also underscored by a universal propensity which further coincides with

another South African intellectual trajectory which precedes the publication of his Xhosa

travelogue: E-Indiya Nase East Africa: Uhambo lomNgqika eMpumalanga. Here, the paper

refers to numerous Xhosa writings which appeared as early as 1772 and 177617

. Similar to

Jabavu‟s travelogue, the earliest Xhosa writing that appeared at the time (1770s) was also travel

writing but was written by a Swedish traveller: Andrew Sparrman.

According to C.L.S. Nyembezi:

In the case of the South African Bantu languages some of the earliest records were found in travellers‟

accounts. Travellers appended to their publications vocabularies and other information. It should be

remembered that Bantu Languages were not written languages. The travellers therefore had to devise their

own method of writing. This was not a very simple matter, particularly because the phonology of the Bantu

languages embodied sounds which were completely strange to the recorders. (Nyembezi, 1961:1)

Nyembezi points out the orality of bantu languages in order to evince how the isiXhosa

orthography owed its literary formation to several foreign linguists in the late 18th

to early 19th

century in South Africa: Sparmman who wrote: The Country of the Hottentots and Caffres

(1770s); John Barrow who recorded a few words in Xhosa (1801); Lichtenstein, a German

traveller, recorded isiXhosa; and other Missionary oriented contributors who translated the Bible

and other works into isiXhosa (Nyembezi, 1961:1). Within this context, isiXhosa can be read into

as a “travelling” language because it appears to have been both conceptualized and mediated – in

its earliest form – through the travelogues of early explorative linguists and missionaries. With

this reading in mind, the phonological morphology of isiXhosa purchases a transnational appeal

and inadvertently placed demands on early lingo-ethnographers to “write” (bhala) their

experiences in isiXhosa to share with the world as early as 1772.

Well over fifty five different authors who were fluent in writing isiXhosa had been published by

the early 1900s. (Jabavu D. D., 1943:11-12)18

In another instance, Tiyo Soga could have well

influenced Jabavu to write his travelogue to India in isiXhosa because it was him, according to

Catherine Higgs, who had influenced Jabavu to write Imbumba yamaNyama after the former had




written Intlalo kaXhosa (Life and customs of the Xhosa) in 1917 (Higgs, 1997:151). Moreover,

other Xhosa intellectuals like A.C. Jordan and S.E.K. Mqhayi both respectively authored books

(i.e. Ingqumbo Yeminyanya and Ityala Lamawele) in isiXhosa which were later translated into

other languages to universalize Xhosa discourses in their „original‟ form. Also, the ability of

Xhosa to purchase universality and commerciability from as early as 1772 later allowed the

father of DDT Jabavu to initiate the first black secular newspaper: Imvo Zabantsundu (Native

Opinion) on the 3rd

of November 1884. The newspaper was dedicated to reporting the plight of

disenfranchised Africans and recording native opinions. Imvo would later inform Mahatma

Ghandi‟s Indian Opinion begun in 1903 which sought to report – although at a later stage – on

the disenfranchised condition of Indians and Africans in South Africa. According to Mushtrie:

While Ghandi recognized the struggles and rights of the African majority, his struggle was an Indian one

located within the larger question of India‟s subjugation in the British Empire. The two struggles were

different, Ghandi reasoned. Indian Opinion, however, always celebrated African achievements and noted

African and coloured political concerns. There was a great awareness of the activities of leaders like John

Dube, Walter Rubusana, Dr Abdurahman, John Tengo Jabavu and others. Gandhi‟s position was that all the

disadvantaged communities should „give strength to the other in urging their common rights‟. (Uma,

2004:132)

The universal orthography encoded in the isiXhosa writings that came out of the bi-lingual

(Anglo-Xhosa) paper Imvo Zabantsundu informed the naming and, perhaps framing of Ghandi‟s

Indian Opinion. Indian Opinion is inflected with ideas that stem from Imvo Zabantsundu and

conversely Imvo Zabantsundu also began to pick up reporting about the Indian condition in

South Africa. Furthermore, Indian Opinion would publish its papers in Gujarati, Tamil, Hindi,

Urdu, Hebrew, Marathi, Sanscrit, Zulu and Dutch19

according to a newspaper‟s cover on the 11th

of June 1903 (Hofmeyr & Williams, 2011:25). Both newspapers are indicative of the nature of

influence within the „quoting circle‟ of the press and also, by extension, relate the Indo-Black

connection to a 3rd

world solidarity which operated against colonial domination and imperial

orthographization by mapping out a culture of inclusivity (transnationality) as evinced above

with several languages appearing in Indian Opinion.

Now, considering that the sons of both the fathers (i.e. John Tengo Jabavu and Mohandis

Ghandi) responsible for Imvo Zabantsundu and Indian Opinion became better acquainted from

the relationship that they had established from the newspapers; it is important to note how a

culture of writing informed the Indo-Black connection between Manilal Ghandi and Davidson

Don Tengo Jabavu. The Ghandian lineage and Jabavu lineage inform each other posteriterally

and show us how “travel writing” informs generations over time and subsequently informs the

Indo-Black relationship in South Africa and India.

Furthermore, the mode of Jabavu‟s writing between in E-Indiya Nase East Africa is important to

read into for the modification of Indo-Black connections through methodologies that consider the

relationship inside the transnational paragon with which both Jabavu and the isiXhosa

orthography had purchased by the time Jabavu travels to India in 1949. According to Catherinne




Higgs, in reference to Ghost of Equality, “There is little question, for example, that this book

would be very different if it had been written by a Xhosa-speaker.” (Higgs, 1997:163) With this

methodological confession from Higgs the isiXhosa purchases a greater demand for being

reviewed and re-read for accuracy and more details against its Western intepretations. Although,

having said that, it would be a grand overstatement – considering the founding of Xhosa

orthohraphy – to discard the Western intepretation of the language. However, the paper is more

concerned here with the universality of Xhosa as informing a non-speaking Xhosa, Catherinne

Higgs, about the life of Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu. In the same way, the universality of Xhosa

would inform Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu‟s relationship with the Indian world.

In the travelogue, D.D.T. Jabavu writes in both the isiXhosa and in the English language. What‟s

linguistically important about Jabavu‟s writing here though is his phonetic tabulation of

isiXhosa. Jabavu writes his travelogue in the phonetic alphabet to better advocate for

universalizing the language and the epistemologies contained in the language. For instance for

writing the [cha] sound Jabavu writes words like “Ukutʃona” (Jabavu D. D.T., 1951:4)

(Sunset/To die) with the phonetic /ʃ/ following the /t/ to produce the Xhosa [cha] sound; even

Jabavu‟s /r/ is written phonetically to appropriately capture the fricative pronunciation of [r]

within the context of isiXhosa. Further, DDT Jabavu provides a glossary spanning across eight

pages of his writing at the end of his travelogue and provides references to both South African

and Indian audiences to read isiXhosa from its more refined perspective. From this position, the

isiXhosa orthography is universalized accurately because it‟s written from a phonetic point of

view. In turn, Jabavu is able to imagine a new Xhosa audience in India and in South Africa. In

this way, in the glossary section of the travelogue, he writes:

(La ngamazwi akholise ukungaqondwa lulutʃa lwezi mini, kuba silityalwa isiXhosa esimnandi sakudala…

kwa nakwiintlanganiso zamakhosi nezabalimi apho kuye kuthethwe isiXhosa esivuthiweyo ngamagqala).

(Jabavu D. D., 1959:168)

Loose translation: These are words written in order for the youth of these days to understand, in order to

enjoy old Xhosa orthography… even when in meetings of chiefs and elocutionists where refined Xhosa

will be enunciated (personal translation)

From the position of reading Xhosa as a transnational language, Jabavu is able to provide

avenues for accessing India for South African readers who aren‟t as knowledgeable about the

richness of isiXhosa and is conversely able to appeal to Indian audiences, familiar with the

phonetic alphabet, to familiarize themselves with a language that had appeared in travel writing

from as early as the late 18th

century.

In Bantu Literature Review when he was reviewing Zulu, Tswana, Xhosa, Sepedi, and

IsiNdebele, Jabavu quipped: “Xhosa has the strongest and most versatile literature in the five

languages under consideration and is second only to Swahili in respect of quantity.” (Jabavu D.

D., 1943:18) From this view, Xhosa fetches an archaic form and richness which could very well

situate it alongside Indian Opinion‟s archaic languages. In that reading, Xhosa and Indian




archaic languages; and by extension: the Indo-Black relationship can be read in terms of what

happens when the historiography underpinning the formation of India‟s archaic languages

agglutinates with the historiography that informs the formation of Xhosa orthography. The latter

analogy can be expanded for enunciating other cultural considerations and implications a

juxtaposed reading of the archaic languages from India and South Africa can bring about to aid

contemporary interests around the Indo-Black relationship at the point where these languages

amalgamate to create new lexicons to encapsulate shifts in vocabulary and meaning making

processes. A perfect example of actualizing the latter will consider aspects of the word: coolie

and how it has informed the indo-Black connection in South Africa and India.

Coolie is derived from the Hindi word kuli (क़ु ली). The origins of the word are uncertain but it is thought to

have been originally used by the Portuguese (cule) description of local hired labourers in India. That use

may be traced back to a Gujurati tribe (the Kulī, who worked as day laborers) or perhaps to the Tamil word

used to describe a payment for work, kuli (கூலி). An alternative etymological explanation is that the word

came from the Urdu qulī (क़ु ली, یلق), which itself could be from the Turkish word for slave, qul. The word

was used in this sense for laborers from India, China, and the far east. (Carter, 2002)

In the derivations of where the word: coolie originates from, all etymologies seem to point out

that the word: coolie is derived, one way or another, from Indian labourers or slaves. DDT

Jabavu situates the origin of the word coolie to someone who carries (ofunqula20

iimpahla

ngezandla) clothing for a living. (Jabavu 1951:11) This situation of the word in terms of its

etymology is akin to the: Hindi, Portuguese, Gujarati, Tamil, Urdu and Turkish derivation of the

word and re-locates the imagination of the Indians in South Africa as personages responsible for

carrying goods. In this example, Xhosa orthography is analogous to the archaic languages of

India and is able to reiterate the meaning that is carried by old orthographies of Indian languages.

In this view, the transnationality of isiXhosa is re-affirmed and the travelling of languages into

each other becomes symbolic for the travelling of the peripatetic subject into India and

conversely the travel of Indian epistemology into South African identity to culturally modify the

Indo-Black connection in a manner reminiscent of the polyglottic journey of the word kuli from

its Hindi origin.

With this view D.D.T. Jabavu is able to facilitate for inflecting his Indian experiences with

isiXhosa for Indians across East Africa and Bombay and Europeans abroad and for Indians in

South Africa; and he conversely provides room for South Africans and Africans interested in his

work, notwithstanding the post-colonial condition, to read into his travel experiences to India

from the comfort of an orthography theat ahould be accessible given the indigeneity of those

who might interact with Jabavu‟s oeuvre.

Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu’s Indian

This section of the paper will consider the analogies that D.D.T. Jabavu creates in his attempt to

understand the Indian epistemologies he had been exposed to inside a transnational framework

which creates comparative examples linking India to South Africa and other places which Jabavu

had been exposed to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolis




In the travelogue Jabavu uses a number of national analogies to situate India in South Africa,

Africa and Jerusalem. For instance, according to Isabel Hofmeyr:

Like all travelers, Jabavu finds himself in a comparative condition and much of his narrative is concerned

with drawing similarities and contrasts between South Africa and India. Some of these are

straightforwardly national as he places two countries alongside each other. Delhi is the Pretoria of India;

Nagpur is the same size as Bloemfontein; the banyan tree reminds him of the boerbean tree and so on.

(Hofmeyr: 2011)

In this way, Jabavu is able to internationalize the comprehension of India against an already

existing experience which enables him to South Africanize India‟s capital city: Delhi.

Conversely, Jabavu was one of the few Black people at the conference and his speaking about

South Africa in relation to apartheid and its architects: Gen. Botha, Gen. Smuts, Gen. Hertzog,

Gen. Smuts, and Dr. Malan (Jabavu 1951:43) inflected the Indian and International political

landscape – given the 100 delegates that were there – with a conception of South Africa‟s

political turmoil a year after apartheid was institutionalized by the ruling Afrikaner party.

Further, in Dar-es-Salaam, Jabavu encountered Indians and made mention of their propensity

towards acquiring property and possession as something important (Jabavu D. D., 1959:8-9) to

them, unlike black South Africans who expect land to be given to them. Jabavu also had to

rethink his tableau against the climatic conditions in India. About the heat in Bombay Jabavu

writes:

Ilanga lase Bombay lithe ndadamba igugu; sisifuthufuthu esingathi kuvulwe isiciko selaa ziko

likaNebukadenetsare ethafeni leDure. Translation: The sun in Bombay was very hot and felt as if someone

had opened Nebuchadnezzar‟s fiery furnace in the field of Dura. (Jabavu D. D., 1951:24)

Here, Jabavu is able to imagine India‟s heat inside an experience of his being exposed, early on,

to missionary education and relates it to a story in the Bible about King Nebuchadnezzar.

Beyond the latter, Jabavu continues to tabulate his envy at seeing Manilal Ghandi discarding his

Western dress for Indian dotis21

in order to acclimatize to the heat in India. In the meantime

Jabavu had to sweat beneath his jackets. (Jabavu D. D., 1951:24-25)

When his journey with Manilal Ghandi had finally brought him to where the Pacifist Conference

was going to be held, Jabavu acknowledges again how the doti was used pervasively to the

degree that it was worn by most Indians with an accompanying cap: the Ghandi-cap.22 The

Ghandi-cap is significant to indicate how the people in India re-imagined a South African

experience of their Bupa: Mohandas K. Ghandi who was arrested in Johannesburg before

returning to India. In turn, the Indian collective conscious performance of their memory of

Mohandas K. Ghandi‟s prison experience informs the travel experience of D.D.T. Jabavu: A

South African who stumbles across a mnemonic that had – through its own travelling, via the

press and other ways – acquired a transnational identity. Also, the nature of dress – because of

the heat – was minimal and Jabavu cites just how surprised he was to see, amongst them, “…a

bearded black man who was from South India, a middle aged man who had only a loin-cloth on,




just like in Lesotho. He did not have either a hat or shoes on. He was a hairy man, both body and

legs, and he always moved around.” (Jabavu D. D., 1951:34)

Most of Jabavu‟s analogies are indexed but not limited to South Africa‟s popular culture in the

early to mid 20th

century. He likens the hairy man from South India to someone in Lesotho –

although a landlocked country – to further encapsulate his South African inflections of India. In

this way, Jabavu sees India from a South African perspective and facilitates for a reading that

sees the indo-black connection in light of its cosmopolitan propensity. In other words, Jabavu‟s

reading of India from a South African [African] perspective facilitates for a South Africanization

of India and converseley, from reading about Ghandi‟s cap, the trans-migration of Ghandi

evinces how India had itself begun to overtly imagine itself in light of the experiences that came

from Johannesburg. Furthermore, the Indian climate re-imagines the dress sense of Jabavu‟s

South African tableau and demands that he responds through a localized style of dress to the

beating of the heat. In this way, Jabavu becomes Indianized whilst he simultaneously Africanized

India through his documentation of it and through his reluctance to embrace all its customs

initially.

In light of the latter, the national analogies between India and South Africa which Jabavu creates

become congruent to his meeting important Indian personages symbolic for India‟s

independence and achievements. Jabavu first introduces his meeting with Dr Rajendra Prasad

who was then appointed president of the Republic of India in 1950; Prime Minister Jawaharlal

Nehru; and even his meeting Sir Rabindranath Tagore posthumously at Santiniketan

symbolically imagines avenues for South African interest around important Indian personages

and also inflects the Indian world with the historiography of South Africa which Jabavu carried

from African personages that preceded his travel to India: C D Zulu, JJR Jolobe who visited in

1936 as well as Mina Soga, J C Mvusi, Albert Luthuli and R V Selope Thema who visited in

1938 to attend the International Mission Conference in Madras. (Hofmeyr: 2011)

Conclusion

Ultimately, the national analogies re-imagine India and South Africa from a vista which

articulates them in ways that debunk the one way problem and facilitate for contemporary

readings which situate Jabavu and his Indian experience in trajectories which do not neglect each

other because of their historical configurations but which inform each other when anchored and

guided by a transnational framework. The reading of DDT Jabavu transnationally explodes

contemporary pedagogical inquests into his travels in exciting ways which re-imagine India, East

Africa and South Africa orthographically.

Anthony Kwame Appiah best encapsulates DDT Jabavu and the manner in which he re-imagines

the world for all who read into his voyages to India and other places. The difficulties which the

peripatetic intellectual faces are also some of the difficulties that academics grapple with in their

attempts at the re-configuration of India from an African perspective and Africa from an Indian

perspective. The problematic is that one has to negate historiographies of colonialism that sought

to stereotype the conception of India by Africans and Africa by Indians.




Thus far the paper has tried to reconfigure how we conceptualize India and Africa and has also

made the attempt to locate Jabavu inside a transnational framework which fosters for a reading

of the Indo-Black connection in South Africa in ways that perpetually open possibilities for

current and later propositions.

Kwame Anthony Appiah writes about such a possibility which Jabavu encapsulates:

DDT Jabavu is able to create many identities for himself and is not limited by them in any way .– he is

transnationally unbound. Jabavu is able to move through the world by imagining a place for himself in it,

while exist-ing in many temporal locations by way of writing time. By the very process of experiencing

what is not „home,‟ what is outside of yourself, and then late returning „home‟ to a “new.…situation.” in

which “you can never fully arrive”, the intellectual is faced with the challenge of mediating between the old

and the new, and arriving at a reinvigorated sense of self, while also being aware of the challenge to

imagine a new, re-translated voice for one‟s self. (Anthony, 1992)




1 C. F. Andrews contribution towards Ghandi’s mission is held in high regard to the extent that a Library was

opened in his memory at India whilst Jabavu, with the 100 delegates, attended the World Pacifist Conference.

2 “The aim of this conference was to discuss and make recommendations on how countries worldwide can live and

work peacefully without fighting especially when it comes to resolving conflicts. The venue for this conference was

near Calcutta [Bholpur - Santiniketan], a city which is on the side facing China.” (Jabavu, 1959:2)

3 S.E.K. Mqhayi’s book – edited by Jeff Opland: Abantu Besizwe: Historical and biographical writings, 1902 – 1944

biographizes the zeitgeist of the Xhosa and its intellectual culture between 1850 and 1944, given the number of

personages – around 65 – whose lives it provides a summative archive for.

4 The qualification of “divergent” here refers to the different route that D.D.T Jabavu’s travel to East Africa posits

into our reading of the historiography underpinning the East-ward journey (flow) as opposed to the Westward

travels (flow) that underpin the dominant traditional oceanographic cultural spaces concerned with the better

understanding of African modernity in the early 20th

century.

5 Connection refers to the association or relationship which had already been established between Africans and

Indians.

6 Two ideas which underpin the notion “universal vista” have to do with situating D.D.T. Jabavu in the way Rogier

Philippe Courau has described him in “STATES OF NOMADISM, CONDITIONS OF DIASPORA: STUDIES IN WRITING BETWEEN SOUTH AFRICA AND THE UNITED STATES, 1913 – 1936”: 1) as a nomadic personage whose subjectivity is fixated with the discovery of the Other (Courau, 2008:14); and as a nomadic subject whose writing needs to be conceieved from the idea of “writing between” (ibid:25): a mode of writing Courau theoretically creates in order to provide a nomenclature for Jabavu’s writing whilst in transit. It is useful to think of Jabavu inside a discourse of nomadism or movement or being in constant transit as a man who allowed himself to be led by his intellectual curiosity.

7 From Higgs’ biography, we learn that Jabavu was named after Rev. John Davidson Don: a Presbyterian minister

living in King William’s Town who wrote a letter to the editor of The Cape Mercury denouncing the government’s

refusal to prosecute Wilhem Pelzer: an Afrikaner farmer who shot and killed an African: Zacharia Gquishela for

trespassing but went unpunished for the act. (Higgs, 1997:12)

8 According to Catherine Higgs ‘The New African’ is “able to function in two worlds without apparent conflict”. P.3

9 The first black secular newspaper Imvo Zabantsundu (Native/Black Opinion) was begun in 1884.

10 “D.D.T. Jabavu knew the meaning of his own life. He self-consciously defined himself as a role model for other

less fortunate Africans; his goal in life was to educate them progressively, so that they too might claim their equal

rights as civilized men. Taken from: D.D.T. Jabavu, “Christian Service in Rural and Industrial South Africa,” The

Christian Mission in the World Today, Report of the Eleventh Quadrennial Convention of the Student Volunteer

Movement for Foreign

11 This view of Jabavu is promulgated by A.P Mda citing that “Jabavu saw everyone as belonging to the Human

race”. (Higgs, 1997:4)

12 The author refers to Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu who wrote the travelogue titled E-Indiya Nase East Africa:

Uhambo lomNgqika eMpumalanga in isiXhosa on his travel to India.




13

The phrase “public lives” is borrowed from Catherine Higgs sub-title in the book: The Ghost of Equality: The

Public Lives of D.D.T Jabavu of South Africa, 1885 – 1959 in order to encapsulate the transnational transcendental

identity that earmarks Prof. Jabavu’s personage upon his visit to India in 1949.

14 “When looking back at the Atlantic slave trade, historians and others were for long accustomed to think that the

number of African slaves taken to the Americas must have amounted to at least 15 millions, and that it could well

have been appreciably greater. But in the 1960s, Professor Phillip D. Curtin realized that this commonly accepted

figure of at least 15 millions derived merely from estimates made in 1861 by an American publicist… *He then

sought to validate the projected amount through available data and] In this way he arrived at an estimated grand

total for the number of African slaves imported into the Americas of only 9 566 000.” (Fage, 1978:253)

*Statistics taken from Phillip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: a Census (1969), Table 1.

15 From 1698 onwards, Fage records that the Omani settlement along the East coast of Africa took over the trading

routes to the East. He writes: “…Portuguese power in East Africa was effectively limited to the coastlands south of

Cape Delgado and to the lower Zambezi valley. North of this, the Omani had secured the restoration of a purely

Muslim trading system linking the East African coastal towns with the lands of the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and

north-western India. Thus from about the middle of the seventeenth century to at least the middle of the

nineteenth, when Europeans referred to ‘African trade’, to all interests and purpose they meant their trade with

the coast from Senegal to about the Congo.” (Fage, 1978:247)

16 Here “cultural production” refers to how Antonio Gramsci had defined the term: a site where culture from above

and culture from below meet in order to manufacture a cultural product.

17 Taken from A Review of Zulu Literature, Professor C.L.S. Nyembezi presents a paper at the Witwatersrand

University on the formation of Bantu Languages in South Africa.

18 See Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu’s Bantu Literature Reviews for further reference.

19 These languages can also be considered to have travelled because they were not, besides Zulu, indigenous

languages of South Africa.

20 With the definition of ukufunqula I encountered a definition that is not the same as the one contained in the

translation that I am reading. The definition of ukufunqula which I received from contemporary speakers of Xhosa

was that it meant to fold clothing at the hips – something which a lot of Indian labourers were fond of doing with

their clothes. However I choose not to use the contemporary interpretation here as I am still not entirely certain

what ukufunqula means.

21 Tableau worn by Indians to cope with the heat.

22 This was called “Gandhi-cap” because it was a memento of a hat worn by prisoners of which Gandhi was one of

them in Johannesburg in 1908. (Jabavu D. D., 1951:33-34)




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