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SOME THOUGHTS ON THE PROCESS OF WHITE-BLACK CROSS-CULTURAL FERTILISATION IN SOUTHERN AFRICAFranco Frescura
INTRODUCTIONThe European mind has always somehow envisaged the African continent as being a place inhabited by strange peoples, endowed with fabulous treasures and filled with wondrous beasts. Plinius the Elder is recorded to have exclaimed once that "Ex Africa semper aliquid novi" or, translated, "there is always something new out of Africa", whilst Herodotus (c484-425BCE), wrote that:
Over the centuries the myth of a "dark" continent continued to be fuelled by tales of amazons, women with two heads and eight breasts, the Christian empire of Prester John and the wealth of King Solomon's mines. The exploration of the central and southern regions during the nineteenth century only served to increase speculation, which was maintained well into the 1900s by books with such mysterious titles as "Through Lands that were Dark" (Hawkins, 1914). These were supplemented by a whole genre of semi-fictional literature headed by such authors as Edgar Rice Burrows and Henry Rider Haggard, whose tales drew heavily upon Zulu and Swazi ethnography. In some instances the overlap between historical fact and speculative fiction was conveniently allowed to persist up to the modern era. A good illustration of this was provided by the former Rhodesian regime of Ian Smith, who actively promoted the misconception that the settlement of Great Zimbabwe owed its origins to some mythical long-vanished race of people. It also attempted to suppress archaeological data which showed its builders to have been the ancestors of the local Shona. The idea that a "primitive" group of people could be capable of erecting "public works" of such magnitude clearly ran contrary to the White stereotype of the indigenous population. It also gave credibility to Black nationalist claims of the existence of an early and advanced Zimbabwean culture. (Frederikse, 1982) At the same time European mentality, in its vanity, saw the presence of the White man as bringing a "civilizing" and "stabilising" influence upon the continent. The equation made between an industrial economy, a protestant work ethos, Christian morality and a White culture is repeated so often as to be unmistakable. Harvey Wilkinson, a missionary to the Transkei and a man not untypical of his time, claimed in 1898 that:
Today many of these tales, beliefs and prejudices have faded into the larger background and historical fabric of the continent, leaving behind them a rich mythological heritage. The idea however that the coming of White settlers to southern Africa initiated an era of cross-cultural borrowing which somehow changed the face of indigenous culture and improved the people's lifestyle, is a myth which has taken historians some time to comprehensively debunk (Peires, 1981; Guy, 1982; Delius, 1983; Bonner, 1983 et al). This was made all the more difficult by the fact that such claims, when applied to the local built environment and material culture, may be perceived to be outwardly valid. The fact that most rural builders have incorporated some modern industrial materials into their constructional process, and that some have changed their dwelling forms to adapt to a more "modern" and "urban" aesthetic, is inescapable. What is at issue therefore in this case is the extent of western technological and material spread, and whether such cross-borrowings can, in fact, be interpreted to be "cultural". PRAGMATIC ADAPTATION vs CULTURAL INFLUENCESThe hypothesis that the presence of an immigrant White culture could have exerted an influence upon the vernacular architecture of southern Africa will need to consider the following factors:
It is possible to argue, at this early stage, that the subject of dwelling form, with its attendant considerations of materials and technology, should be differentiated, in the discussion which follows, from that of settlement pattern. The reasons for this are evident. The first can be perceived to be part of a delicate social and environmental balance which links dwelling, materials and technology into an interdependent cycle of existence. In the eventuality of an imbalance being created by the introduction of sudden or radical innovations, they would tend to respond as an interacting whole, compensating for and adjusting to each other's changing status (Frescura, 1981a; NBRI, 1976; Hardie, 1980). These factors however, should only be seen as being relevant at the level of the individual dwelling unit. It is only seldom that they have any bearing upon the larger structuring of settlement patterns. The latter, on the other hand, are also subject to social and environmental conditions but of a totally different nature. Not only do they act at a larger regional level of concern but are not directly inter-related, and hence are less vulnerable, to comparatively minor economic and physical fluctuations. Some thought should also be given to the definition of exactly what constitutes a “foreign influence" and how pervasive it should have to become before it may be seriously considered to have undermined the traditional value systems of indigenous society, and hence its built environment. Vernacular architecture can hardly be described as being "static". Its links to the human and physical environment ensure that it is in a constant state of flux, responding and interacting with it as part of a continuous process of growth and transformation. Because it is a grass-root architecture, its range of dwelling forms, technologies and building materials has the ability to expand to incorporate any amount of innovation. In theory therefore, it would be possible to state that any building which meets with the basic criteria of "found” material and certain production processes could lay claim to the title of "vernacular". On the other hand such a structure would have to conform to other requirements of a historical and aesthetic nature before it could also be considered to be "indigenous". In reality, therefore, the dividing line between the two is not simple to define. The case histories quoted below illustrate this point.
These cases have manifold implications. Firstly, the adaptive and highly pragmatic nature of indigenous building has allowed for the inclusion of new materials and technologies into the vocabulary of vernacular construction. In many cases these have been incorporated without necessarily altering the form or the sense of the dwellings or giving up their textural richness. Secondly, very few dwelling types have been lost to rural architecture as a result of material changes. If anything the range of forms being built has been widened. Where changes have occurred in the traditional dwelling norms of an area, this has happened without there necessarily being parallel or resultant alterations in the structural hierarchy of local settlement patterns or, for that matter, in the usage of the dwelling unit itself. Finally, even when the concept of a traditional homestead has been translated into a modern, extended-plan urban dwelling, certain planning priorities based upon cultural preferences have tended to emerge. This means that the concept of what can be defined as "traditional", and what cannot, should be considered to be extremely flexible. To claim, for example, that no "true" indigenous architecture can exist in southern Africa, outside the bounds of a museum area, on the grounds that it has all been contaminated, to a greater or lesser degree, by White technology, is patently absurd. It would also be equally ridiculous to state that local building traditions have survived unscathed from foreign influence. They clearly have not. What does appear to be true however is that local builders have been pragmatic in their adoption of new technologies and dwelling forms, limiting their options to those elements which have suited their needs and rejecting most others which have not. This approach is compounded by the social mechanics of indigenous dwelling construction which militate against changes which are either too radical or too sudden. It transpires, therefore, that what changes have occurred to the local built environment as a result of White or western influence have been largely limited to technological innovations or the transformation of the dwelling form. Although it is probable that, in the past, both may have had connotations of tradition and culture attached to them, in many cases these values have been transferred to the new technologies or structures. The settlement pattern, on the other hand, has not been subject to either and has therefore been able to survive largely untouched until comparatively recent times. The degree to which the indigenous architecture of southern Africa can be seen to have been subjected to change of a White or western origin is therefore largely a matter of personal perception. Most western observers in the past have been domocentric, that is to say, orientated towards individual dwelling forms, and their reports of the local built environment were usually limited to accounts of domestic structures and granaries. Many examples of this have already been quoted during the course of earlier chapters. The more recent approach however has been to view the homestead as a whole, and although some changes may be perceived to have occurred even here, this element of the local built environment can generally be considered to have altered very little in most areas up to the 1930s. Thereafter however the rural picture becomes more fluid as a shortage of land and the growth of larger semi-urban concentrations begin to impinge upon an already impoverished rural economy. The subsequent decrease in the number of larger homesteads which occurs after this time can probably be attributed to these factors, although the growth of a missionary influence, leading to a drop in polygamous marriages, cannot be ruled out altogether as a contributory element. CONCLUSIONSThis paper has attempted to establish some guidelines as to how much innovation of an urban and industrial nature can be said to be assimilated by local vernacular architecture before its indigenous and rural status becomes threatened. What has emerged, in the process, is the fact that change can be perceived to have occurred at a number of levels: material, technological, dwelling form and settlement pattern. It was shown that although in many cases these elements individually could bear a small degree of alteration, when this was exceeded it tended to have a ripple effect into the others as well. Generally however, settlement pattern could be seen to stand apart from those considerations surrounding the individual dwelling unit. The first has its structural principles firmly rooted in social hierarchies, the second in pragmatic decisions of shelter. Therefore the dwelling unit is thought to have been far more vulnerable to change than was larger settlement form. Whether however such change could be interpreted as being "cultural" in nature is a question which is still open to discussion. With these points in mind, it becomes possible to arrive at certain conclusions of a historical nature. The accounts of early travellers to the region gave little idea of the social structures involved in indigenous settlement patterns. Their descriptions concentrated largely upon the local dwelling form and its construction and little was ever said of hierarchical distributions of huts or the functions of external spaces. However, if we can now accept the fact that changes to the habitat began with the technology of building and the form of the structure and only later spread to the pattern of settlement, then the whole question of White-Black cross-cultural pollination begins to fall into its correct perspective. In these terms it may be seen that although in some cases an element of dwelling aesthetic may have been involved in the identification of regional identities, the larger burden for this fell upon the settlement form, it being a more direct reflection of local social hierarchies, kinship and political systems and economic activity. Therefore although the rural dwelling unit can be perceived have undergone a measure of westernisation, in cultural terms this influence can be considered to be superficial and perhaps even transitional. The real impact of cross-cultural fertilisation should have manifested itself at the larger level of homestead settlement. As however, current research has shown that many of the traditional values attached to it persist to the present day, this study must come to the conclusion that the rural built environment has succeeded in retaining its essentially indigenous character despite the fact that local culture has been in intermittent contact with immigrant influences for over four hundred years. POSTSCRIPTThis paper was originally presented at a conference on Socio-Economic Development in Historic Perspective, held at UPE in July 1990, under the title of Colonialism as a Factor in the Development of A Southern African Indigenous Vernacular Architecture. To the best of my knowledge, it must still to be published. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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