These Potatoes Look Like Humans

Mbuso Nkosi

Description

A profound interrogation of the ontological/spiritual meaning of land and home in the context of the historical dispossession of the indigenous population.

These Potatoes Look Like Humans offers a unique understanding of the intersection between land, labour, dispossession and violence experienced by Black South Africans from the apartheid period to the present. In this ground-breaking book, Mbuso Nkosi criticises the historical framing of this debate within narrow materialist and legalistic arguments. His assertion is that, for most Black South Africans, the meaning of land cannot be separated from one’s spiritual and ancestral connection to it, and this results in him seeing the dispossession of land in South Africa with a perspective not yet explored.

Nkosi takes as his starting point the historic 1959 potato boycott in South Africa, which came about as a result of startling rumours that potatoes dug out of the soil from the farms in the Bethal district of Mpumalanga were in fact human heads. Journalists such as Ruth First and Henry Nxumalo went to Bethal to uncover these stories and revealed horrific accounts of abuse and routine killings of farmworkers by white Afrikaners. The workers were disenfranchised Black people who were forced to work on these farms for alleged ‘crimes’ against National Party state laws, such as the failure to carry passbooks.

In reading this violence from the perspectives of both the Black worker and the white farmer, Nkosi deploys the device of the eye to look at his research subjects and make sense of how the past informs the present. His argument is that the violence against Black farmworkers was not only on the exploitation of cheap labour, but also an anxiety white farmers felt about their settler-colonial appropriation of land. This anxiety, Nkosi argues, is pervasive in current heated public debates on the land question and calls for ‘land expropriation without compensation’. Furthermore, the dispossession of Black people from their land cannot be overcome until there is a recognition of the dead and restless spirits of the land, and a spiritual return to home for Black people’s ancestors. Until such time, the cycles of violence will persist.

This book will be of interest to academics and scholars working in the area of land and workers’ struggles but also to the general reader who wants to gain a deeper understanding of redress and social justice on multiple levels.

Prologue: Emazambaneni: the land of terror

Chapter 1 The spectre of the human potato

Chapter 2 Whose eyes are looking at history?

Chapter 3 Bethal, the House of God

Chapter 4 Violence: the white farmers’ fears erupt

Chapter 5 These eyes are looking for a home

Chapter 6 Bethal today

Chapter 7 Our eschatological future

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Index

Sujets

• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• África
• General officer
• History of Africa
• General
• Africa
• Law

Informations

• Publié par: WITS University Press
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776148424
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 10 Mo

Extrait

These Potatoes Look Like Humans

These Potatoes Look Like Humans The Contested Future of the Land, Home and Death in South Africa VanyaGastrow uMbuso weNkosi

Published in South Africa by: Wits University Press 1 Jan Smuts Avenue Johannesburg 2001

www.witspress.co.za

Copyright © Mbuso NKosi 2023 Published edition © Wits University Press 2023 Cover image © Peter Magubane Images and figures © Copyright holders

First published 2023

http://dx.doi.org.10.18772/12023098400

978-1-77614-840-0 (PaperbacK) 978-1-77614-841-7 (HardbacK) 978-1-77614-842-4 (Web PDF) 978-1-77614-843-1 (EPUB)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.

All images remain the property of the copyright holders. The publishers gratefully acKnowledge the publishers, institutions and individuals referenced in captions for the use of images. Every effort has been made to locate the original copyright holders of the images reproduced here; please contact Wits University Press in case of any omissions or errors.

This publication is peer reviewed following international best practice standards for academic and scholarly booKs.

Project manager: Lisa Compton Copyeditor: Alison Lowry Proofreader: Inga Norenius Indexer: Sanet le Roux Cover design: Hybrid Creative Typeset in 11.5 point Crimson

In loving memory of Mpho Mulalo Ratshilumela (28 November 2014 – 7 December 2021) & ThoKo Nellie NKosi (26 February 1954 – 24 September 2022)

List of illustrations

AcKnowledgements

Prologue: Emazambaneni: The land of terror

1 The spectre of the human potato

2 Whose eyes are looKing at history?

3 Bethal, the house of God

4 Violence: The white farmers’ fears erupt

5 These eyes are looKing for a home

6 Bethal today

7 Our eschatological future

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Contents

ix

xi

1

11

31

51

77

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115

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