MFECANE NEVER HAPPENED
MFECANE NEVER HAPPENED Hadebe Hadebe | 04. December 2020 In the mainstream studies there is an argument that no slaves were harvested from South Africa. This is from European tendencies of treating South Africa as if it were separate from the rest of the continent. In his article ‘Slavery, social incorporation and surplus extraction; the nature of free and unfree labour in South-East Africa’ (1981), the late historian Patrick Harries of the University of Basel, Switzerland, observed that, “it is commonly believed that in south-east Africa the Nguni had a natural aversion to both export and domestic forms of slavery.” However, more and more evidence points to the reality that export and domestic slave trade existed. Much of the literature tends to cite conflict and wars as the reason for huge instability in southern Africa in the latter parts of the 1700s through the nineteenth century. This article lays the blame squarely on slavery as a huge problem, and conflic...