alan g morris
M
ichael Cronin wrote a short paper lers had as much right as black ‘natives’ to
in the South African Journal of Sci- take the land for themselves. Cronin’s new
ence in 1982 documenting some dates were hard evidence that showed the
new radiocarbon dates from the Eastern antiquity of settlement of Iron Age farmers
Cape (Cronin, 1982). The paper has not in the country. Not only had these farmers
been recognised as groundbreaking, yet been present for nearly two millennia in the
with hindsight the paper heralded a new Transvaal
3
as noted by the work of Revil Ma-
phase in South African archaeology that son in the early 1970s, but they had even
began in the 1970s and flourished in the reached the far south-east by 750 AD.
1980s. Cronin’s evidence of Early Iron Age
settlement approximately 1 200 years ago Archaeology has always had an important
on the Transkei coast of the eastern Cape
1
role in the construction of national histo-
(Fig. 9.1) was in direct conflict with the ries and has been susceptible to selective
politically motivated ‘Christian National interpretation because of this, yet it is also a
Education’
2
model of the apartheid govern- powerful tool to uncover information about
ment that prevailed at the time. Apartheid the past that has been forgotten, ignored or
education taught that both Europeans and is simply unknown. This is of special impor-
Bantu-speaking South Africans were new tance in South Africa as research in the dis-
arrivals in South Africa, the former moving cipline of archaeology has spanned the pe-
east from the western Cape and the latter riod of colonialism, apartheid and the new
moving down from beyond the Limpopo democratic order since 1994. The discipline
River, the current northern border of South has been abused in the past, but the hard
Africa with Zimbabwe, and the two meet- work of professional and amateur scholars
ing at the Great Fish River in the eastern has accumulated a vast body of evidence
Cape in the 1770s. The implication was that is finally starting to give us a more
that the country was essentially ‘empty’ broadly inclusive picture of the past. This
before then (ignoring the San hunters and ranges from the distant origin of human
the Khoe herders) and that the white sett- ancestors through the long period domi-
1 South Africa consists of nine provinces which are shown in Figure 9.1.
2 Christian National Education was the official education policy of the apartheid government that not only separated the schools according
to race, but also imposed a curriculum that was specifically adapted to each race group. The curriculum for black schools was intended
to limit the academic attainment of the scholars to prepare them for menial employment, while the curriculum for white schools included
specific propagandistic content that defended their position of superiority in society.
3 Former province that covered roughly the current Gauteng, North-West, Mpumalanga and Limpopo provinces.
241
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