The collection is made up of 891 writings in seven indigenous languages from writers who were obviously anxious to preserve the history and culture of their people for future generations.
They arguably represent the greatest indigenous language historical and cultural treasure that our country possesses.In its research for stories to be included in South Africa’s leading heritage series Our Story, which City Press has been running extracts from for the past few months, SA Heritage Publishers discovered a collection of writings that can only be described as a treasure trove of South African culture and history.
So the elderly interviewee was born in about 1850 and if he retold stories told to him by his grandfather, he would have been told stories of his people going back to the late 1700s! The writings cover agriculture, traditional medicine, village and hut construction, divination, cosmological understandings of the people, history, folk tales, traditional law, cultural activities and much more relating to a large number of southern Africa’s ancestral people.SA Heritage Publishers is in the process of transcribing these and then translating them into English to ensure that they can be accessed by the majority of South Africans.
To this day, the name of Nkosi Bhambatha kaMancinza Zondi resounds through South African history, as an icon of resistance to colonial oppression.A little time has passed since the newspaper announcement that anyone with knowledge about their family or nation could write to the government.I, Ephraim Shezi, from the home of my father, Mntwabantu Shezi, desire to set forth my knowledge about our nation of Shezi, known as the people of emaChubeni, whereas our second surname is the people of Shezi.
After the Boer War, the white Natal government created a new law for extracting tax, payable per head.Some said that it should be paid, others said one should never have to pay for all the heads. This was discussed at many meetings in various places.Rebelling against the tax, Bhambatha and his impi arrived at Ngome forest, dressed and armed for war, ready to fight in the white man’s country.