Keeping the Natives in their Place: The Ideology of White Supremacy and the Flogging of African Offenders in Colonial Natal — part 1

• Jurisdiction: South Africa
• Citation: (2020) 26(2) Fundamina 374
• Published date: 17 March 2021
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.47348/FUND/v26/i2a5
• Author: Peté, S.A.
• Pages: 374-423
• Date: 17 March 2021

374

https://doi.org/10.47348/FUND/v26/i2a5

KEEPING THE NATIVES IN THEIR

PLACE:

THE IDEOLOGY OF WHITE

SUPREMACY AND THE FLOGGING

OF AFRICAN OFFENDERS IN

COLONIAL NATAL – PART 1

Stephen Allister Peté*

ABSTRACT

The political economy of colonial Natal was based on a coercive and

hierarchical racial order. Over decades, the white colonists struggled

to assert their power over the indigenous inhabitants of the colony, to

force them off their land and into wage labour in service of the white

colonial economy. This process resulted in ongoing resistance on the

part of the indigenous population, including a series of rebellions and

revolts throughout the colonial period, which were met with force by

the white colonists. White colonial ideology was shaped by the violent

and adversarial nature of the social, political and economic relations

between white and black in the colony. It was also inuenced by the

* BA LLB (University of Natal) LLM (University of Cape Town)

M Phil (University of Cambridge) PhD (University of KwaZulu-Natal).

Associate Professor, School of Law, University of KwaZulu-Natal. E-mail:

PETE@ukzn.ac.za

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THE IDEOLOGY OF WHITE SUPREMACY IN COLONIAL NATAL

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broader global context, within which colonisation was justied by racist

variants of the theory of Social Darwinism. Driven by a strange mix of

deep insecurity and fear on the one hand, and racist paternalism on

the other, the white settlers of colonial Natal developed a variant of

white supremacist ideology with a special avour. Nowhere was this

more apparent than in their near obsession with ogging as the most

appropriate manner of dealing with African offenders in particular.

By closely examining a series of public debates that took place in

the colony of Natal between 1876 and 1906, this contribution seeks

to excavate the various nuanced strands of thinking that together

comprised the ideology of white supremacy in the colony at that time.1

Keywords: Race; racism; racist; white supremacy; corporal punishment;

ogging; whipping; colonial ideology; colonial Natal; colony of Natal

1 Introduction

An analysis of the discourse among colonial ofcials, prison

authorities and representatives of the white colonists of Natal during

the colonial period2 reveals a signicant disjuncture between the

views of the different stake holders concerning the various forms of

punishment considered appropriate for various types of offenders

in the colony. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, in

particular, the views of colonial ofcials with direct ties to London

began to diverge from the views of those ofcials and parties who

identied as colonists and, instead, came to see themselves as

representing the interests of the white settler community. The views

of the ofcials were shaped by prevailing theories of punishment

in the colonial metropole, whereas those of the colonists and their

direct representatives were shaped by what they regarded as the

harsh realities of colonial life.3 As the colonial period wore on,

1 Readers are advised that this contribution deals with historical material that

may be deeply offensive to many as it includes racist terms commonly used

during the colonial period. For the sake of historical accuracy, many direct

quotations cited here retain the racist terms originally used. However, neither

the author of this contribution nor the editors of this journal condone – much

less approve of – the use of these racist terms. Instead, the presence of such

terms in some of the direct quotations is aimed solely at giving an accurate

picture of the racist ideology that existed in Natal during the colonial period.

2 The colonial period in Natal stretched from 1845 to 1910.

3 As the nineteenth century came to an end and the twentieth century began,

the colonial authorities in London became increasingly uncomfortable with

whipping as a form of punishment. As Paul Ocobock 2012: 35 points out:

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STEPHEN ALLISTER PETÉ

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the white colonists and their representatives increasingly began to

regard the colonial authorities as being out of touch with the types

of punishment required to maintain order in a colony such as Natal.

In the European context, the birth of the modern prison

during the last decades of the eighteenth and the rst decades of

the nineteenth centuries was bound up with the idea that it was

possible to achieve harmony in society through a social contract

that recognised the human rights of each individual citizen. Those

individuals who violated the social contract were to be trained and

disciplined while in prison, so as to bring them back within the terms

of the broad social consensus.4 In the colonial context, however,

achieving effective social control was much less about attempting to

establish some sort of ideological consensus than it was about the

direct exercise of coercive physical power by the coloniser over the

colonised. Furthermore, this coercive power was explicitly racist in

character – it was the power of the white colonial master over the

body of his black colonised servant. In the colony of Natal, the

instrument of that power was the notorious cat-o-nine-tails.5

“In 1897 and again in 1902, secretary of state for the colonies Joseph

Chamberlain ordered all territories to submit annual returns of corporal

punishment for Parliament’s perusal.”

4 As Michael Ignatieff 1978: 72 points out: “The key problem for social order

[in England] ... was to represent the suffering of punishment in such a way

that those who endured it and those who watched its iniction conserved

their moral respect for those who inicted it. The efciency of punishment

depended on its legitimacy.”

5 Details of the extent to which brutal corporal punishment was employed in

the colony – mostly against members of the black indigenous population –

are provided in sections 3, 4 and 5 of Part 1, and in sections 2, 3 and 4 of

Part 2 of this contribution. Section 4 of Part 2 explains how the extensive

use of the cat-o-nine-tails gave rise to the term “Cult of the Cat” in relation

to the punishment of so-called natives in the colony. It should be noted

that it was not only in colonial Natal that corporal punishment donned a

racist mantle. For example, with regard to colonial Kenya, David Anderson

2011: 496 states as follows: “Punishment was a matter of race, expressed

through notions of Social Darwinian development. In essence, ‘primitive

man’ was thought to deserve only primitive punishment because that was

all he would understand. The African needed to be f‌logged ‘like a child’

to inculcate discipline, yet once ‘trousered’, he had taken an important

step towards the world of the white man and might be treated with greater

respect.” Ocobock 2012: 39, also referring to colonial Kenya, makes a similar

point: “[R]ace played a signicant role in the nature of corporal punishment.

The vast majority of youths caned by the colonial state were Africans. Only a

handful of Arab and Asian young men received corporal punishment ... . In

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