Durban - A treasure trove of indigenous language manuscripts detailing the lives of South Africans who lived almost a century ago has been brought to life in one of the country’s biggest heritage projects.
Known as ‘Ancestral Voices’, the bilingual volumes that are printed in English and one indigenous language, detail the cultural practices and history of the ancestors of South Africans, in their own words.
Terence Ball from Heritage Publishers says over the past two years, 891 writings by 186 authors were typewritten on about 19 000 A4 pages.
“It’s been deeply moving and a privilege to be involved in this project,” Ball said.
He said the writings, which excluded Siswati and isiNdebele because they were not written languages at the time, were handwritten by the original authors between the 1930s (and sometimes earlier) and the 1950s and then typewritten as part of the ‘Ancestral Voices’ project.
The project involved Heritage Publishers in conjunction with the South African National Lexicography Units, the University of Pretoria’s Special Collections Unit in the Department of Library Sciences, and the South African High Commission to the UK and Northern Ireland.
Ball said so far 361 of these writings were transcribed into current indigenous language orthography and then translated into English so that they could be understood by most South Africans.
The authors were mainly teachers, religious ministers or traditional leaders who lived in the communities which they served and spoke the local languages, he said.
Ball said the completed works consisted of 31 A4 volumes of 128 pages each and they were also the first bilingual indigenous and English language books with the indigenous language on the left pages and the English on the right pages respectively. Twelve more volumes will be released in 2024.
The Independent on Saturday reviewed the first two volumes of the isiZulu/English heritage writings.
They covered a mixture of issues from customs to the origin of clan names, history and stories of various people.
It also told stories of cannibalism, why people are scared of owls and the dangers of polygamy.
The story of the Shezi clan and the Bhambatha rebellion of 1906 is also captured, while a document written in isiLala, which is now extinct, can also be seen.
A section of Volume 2 which deals with personal names and their explanations reads as follows:
Ndosi: “things happened like this - a hunting party went out and Cele stabbed a lion. When they were all still marvelling at its talons (izindosi), a message came that Cele’s first wife had given birth to a son. Then Cele said, “Well, that Child of mine will be Ndosi”.
Ball said during the course of the project, many of the estimated six million words were not understood because they were no longer in use.
Where the meanings of words were found, they were added to indigenous language dictionaries, he said.
“Many of the unknown words were related to clothing, parts of plants and medicine making,” said Ball.
He said because this was a living heritage project they wanted people to participate by tracing the descendants of as many authors as possible so that they could do biographies of them for inclusion in future editions.
It would also serve to re-establish the meanings of indigenous language words used in the old texts that were no longer in common use so that they could be included in dictionaries.
He said readers might discover that they were descendants of the authors or the elderly who had been interviewed by the writers.
The history of some authors had already been found, while they had also traced the great granddaughter of Somashungwana Magwaza, who was a warrior at Isandlwana.
Ball said the books retailed at R160 each but direct customers would get a discount of up to 15%.
Those interested in purchasing the books can email: [email protected]
The Independent on Saturday