The Nightwatchman: Essays on Portraiture and the Black Male Figure in Colonial South Africa brings into focus the African policeman as a subject of portraiture. While colonial governments co-opted and conscripted Africans into military and policing services, it was after the Zulu defeat of the English in the battle of Isandlwana that a genre of photography developed around images of the 'Zulu warrior' and 'Zulu policeman'. In this illustrated book, Hlonipha Mokoena extends the literature on colonial ethnographic photography by creating a narrative of nightwatchman portraiture from the rich archive of images. Although the origins of this genre lay in the representation of 'Fingoes' (amaMfengu) during the frontier wars, she argues that an ethnological spectacle of the Zulu male body was inaugurated after the last Zulu king, Cetshwayo, was photographed as a posing subject. While much research has focussed on the African man employed in emasculating labour or as a functionary of settler power, this book shifts debates about how the body moves in history. Placed in uniform, the male subject becomes aestheticised and admired. Mokoena focuses less on the idiosyncrasies of the uniform than on the sartorial selection processes and co-optation of colonial aesthetic culture that constructed the idea of the Nonqgqayi or nightwatchman as a fully formed photographic presence. The beauty captured in these images upends conceptions of colonial photography as a tool of oppression. In its focus on the figure of the black and brown fighting man, The Nightwatchman offers an innovative work on the history of portraiture and dress in colonial South Africa. Incorporating insights from African history, art history, anthropology and critical theory, it offers new insights about the use of men of colour in colonial warfare and new avenues for the interpretation of visual representations of the black male figure
Hlonipha Mokoena is Director of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She is the author of Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual.
Acknowledgements List of illustrations Introduction: Nongqayi, the Nightwatchman Chapter 1 The Frontier Dandies Chapter 2 Johnny Fingo Chapert 3 Langalibalele, the Black Beast Chapter 4 Cetshwayo, the Photogenic King Chapter 5The Rickshaw Puller and the Kitchen Suit Chapter 6 The Black Watch Chatpter 7 A Man Named 'Cash' Bibliography Index
The Nightwatchman extends the literature on colonial photography and dress by exploring the representation of black men in South African portraiture.
"In a creative and illuminating look at the role of African men in colonial armies and police forces, Hlonipha Mokoena makes a compelling argument about why these men served in institutions bent on the oppression of African societies. To call them mercenaries, Mokoena argues, is to miss the complexity and density of the motivations that shaped their actions; it is to miss the ways in which these men carved out opportunities in colonial settings"-- "Jacob Dlamini, Associate Professor, Department of History, Princeton University" "Mokoena invokes the figure of the nightwatchman to drive a project of moving through and beyond colonial abjection. Exploring the traces of aestheticised bodies, sartorial choices, desire and curiosity in provocative and oblique ways, the book rocks our sense of the possibilities of the available archive."-- "Carolyn Hamilton, Professor, Department of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town" "Nightwatchman is in a class of its own. At the centre of Mokoena's original book are aesthetically attired shapeshifters whose agency, prowess and beauty Africanised colonial culture. This is a provocative and powerful story."-- "Benedict Carton, George Mason University"
