Faku’s Tusks: Colonialism, Resistance and Accommodation in Early 20th–Century South Africa

An African ploughing his fields in western Mpondoland in 1910 uncovered two elephant tusks at the site of what had once been King Faku’s homestead. This obscure incident in the Transkeian Territories of South Africa provides an entry point to examining the consolidation of colonial bureaucratic control, and African responses to it, in the second decade of the 20th century by the Union of South Africa government. The unearthing of the tusks illuminated, on the one hand, Mpondo attempts to control the relics of Faku, and the memories associated with them, and to reassert traditional authority over the allocation of land; and on the other, efforts by the colonial administration of the Transkei to tighten control over land and strengthen ‘native affairs’ administration. In the process it explores how differing approaches to dealing with the government and contestations for power within Mpondo society impacted on their relations with the colonial state.