Lorena Rizzo - Photography and History in Colonial Southern Africa

Shades of Empire

Lorena Rizzo

First published 2020

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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2020 Lorena Rizzo

The right of Lorena Rizzo to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN: 978-1-138-34301-6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-43945-2 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo

by Lumina Datamatics Limited

There are a number of institutions and people without whom this book would not have been possible. I began working on this project as a fellow in the Department of Africanamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan in 2010. I would like to thank Derek Peterson for hosting me, and David William Cohen for the many conversations, early morning neighbourhood breakfasts, and walks around Ann Arbor. Helmut Puff and Kathryn Babayan were lovely friends and colleagues with whom to share the joys and sorrows of diasporic lives. Claire Zimmerman, Christopher Ratt, and their two children, Helena and Leo, hosted me and made me feel welcome and at home. Between 2011 and 2013 I was a research fellow in the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in Bellville, South Africa. These were the formative years for this project, since I could do extensive archival research, interviews, and oral history. Premesh Lalu and Suren Pillay were generous hosts at the CHR, and every conversation with them was exciting, instructive, and critical for refining my understanding of South African history and critical theory. Ciraj Rassool and Lelie Witz at the History Department of UWC have been colleagues and friends for many years. I value their ongoing interest in my work, their intellectual generosity, and their exceptional knowledge of South African pasts and presents. Ciraj, Leslie and Gary Minkley, at the University of Fort Hare, Alice, Eastern Cape, South Africa, have been critical in transforming South African history, and they have been an inspiration for those of us who wish to push the boundaries of the discipline and write imaginative histories that speak to audiences within and beyond the academy in meaningful ways. While at UWC, I was privileged to meet a group of exceptional co-fellows and members of faculty, among them Phindezwa Mnyaka, Nina Sylvanus, Ruchi Chaturvedi, Jane Taylor, Noeleen Murray, Brian Raftopoulos, Maurits van Bever Donker, Janeke Thumbran, Bianca van Laun, and Anna Selmeczi, all of whom made the CHR a place of scholarly rigour, and social and personal well-being. Lameez Lalkhen was a remarkable and friendly administrator, who made the lives of international visitors as comfortable as possible. The summer schools organised by Premesh Lalu, Gary Minkley and Helena Pohlandt-McCormick were great opportunities for intense discussion and for strengthening our ties across disciplinary fields and geographical regions. I continue to value the colleagues I met on these occasions and the friendships forged. Archival research in Cape Town was critical for some of the key arguments developed in the book. Erika Le Roux and staff at the Western Cape Archives and Records Service were incredibly helpful and supportive in accessing the photographic collections and granting permission to reproduce and publish photographs. Collections at the South African National Archives and the Ditsong Museum of Cultural History in Pretoria, the Museum Africa in Johannesburg, and the National Geospatial Information in the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform in Cape Town were all easily accessible, and the archivists most helpful in securing high-quality reproductions of photographs. I am particularly indebted to Elize Schneigansz for her research assistance. Tina Smith, head curator at the District Six Museum, and Paul Grendon, independent photographer in Cape Town, have become dear friends and family, critical interlocutors, and generous colleagues, who introduced me to the thriving world of Cape Towns museums, festivals, and creative and visual arts, and have refined my understanding of diverse cultures and practices of knowledge production. I am grateful to Paul Grendon for allowing me to use some of his photographs in the book. Research for the book also included regular visits to Namibia, where I worked in various archives and collections. My thanks go to the National Archives of Namibia and to their retired head archivist Werner Hillebrecht, who continues to be generous and helpful whenever I need advice in locating photographs and contextualising them in a history of archival acquisition, conservation, and classification that remains, at times, nebulous. My Namibian colleagues have always been supportive of my work and have made the many visits and research initiatives over the past two decades always pleasurable and successful. My thanks go to Martha Akawa and Godman Gwasira at the University of Namibia, Saara Ilovu at the Usakos Museum, and last but not least to Jeremy Silvester at the Museums Association of Namibia. In 2013 I returned to Europe and took up a post in the History Department at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. My thanks go to Angelika Epple for her commitment to make African history part of the curriculum there. I enjoyed two years of teaching, and the possibility to think about my work in Southern Africa within the framework of transnational and global history. Between 2015 and 2017 I had the privilege to spend two years at Harvard University, first as a visiting scholar at the Center for African Studies and later as the Oppenheimer fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. The years spent at Harvard provided the perfect academic environment for writing the book, and many colleagues there have shared ideas and made critical comments on earlier drafts of chapters. My gratitude and thanks go to Jean and John Comaroff, who have been mentors and friends for many years. Their scholarly creativity and rigour, and their intellectual generosity are exceptional; the many conversations in Cambridge, Basel, and Cape Town were simply wonderful. Henry Louis Gates Jr. was a generous host at the Hutchins Center, and I am grateful to him for creating a fellowship programme that enables scholars from across the world and the disciplines to meet and engage with each others work. Christian Crouch and Gaiutra Bahadur have been wonderful co-fellows; my thinking and writing on history and photography has benefited enormously from our exchanges and conversations during the Hutchins Center Fellows Colloquium. My sincere thanks go to Krishna Lewis and to her colleagues, all of whom have made the fellows feel at home.