Name: Luka Jantjie
Brand: Aldridge Press (UK)
SKU: 9780952065111
Price: 18.95 GBP
Availability: InStock

Luka Jantjie

Resistance Hero of the South African Frontier

By (author): Kevin Shillington

Published by Aldridge Press (UK)

In Stock

£18.95

Format: Paperback
Pages: 320
Illustrations: 120 photos, 10 drawings & 23 maps
ISBN: 9780952065111
Publication Date: 31-Aug-2011

Subjects:
African history
Republic of South Africa

Quantity

Luka Jantjie is today a largely forgotten hero of resistance to British colonialism. His place in South African history has tended to be overshadowed by events elsewhere in the region. This book attempts to redress the balance by recording his remarkable story. In 1870, at the beginning of the Kimberley diamond mining boom that was to transform southern Africa, Luka Jantjie was the first independent African ruler to lose his land to the new colonialists, who promptly annexed the diamond fields. His outspoken stand against the hypocrisy of colonial 'justice' earned him the epithet: "a wild fellow who hates the English". As the son of an early Christian convert, Luka was brought up to respect peace and non-violence; his boycott of rural trading stores in the early 1890s was perhaps the earliest use of non-violent resistance in colonial South Africa. His steady refusal to bow to colonial demands of subservience intensified the enmity of local colonists determined to 'teach him a lesson'. As many of his people succumbed to colonial pressures, Luka was twice forced to take up arms to defend himself and his people from colonial attacks. His life ended in a dramatic and heroic last stand in the ancestral sanctuary of the Langeberg mountain range; its tragic consequences stretched far into the next century.

Kevin Shillington holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in African history from the University of London. He has extensive teaching experience in Africa at school and university level, and is the author of a number of historical and contemporary works.

The inner workings of the colonial system, its inexorable logic, are laid bare in Shillingtons work. Even more importantly, it also provides us with a story of a previously largely unrecognised new hero in our resistance history. Shillington in his conclusion expresses the hope that his book rectifies the omission of Luka Jantjie in the pantheon of African leaders in southern Africa, and there is no doubt he has admirably achieved this. The biography also refines our understanding of the nature of resistance to colonial penetration. As the life of Luka shows, it took on a range of subtle forms, varying according to circumstances from accommodation to resistance, thus defying simplistic categories of nineteenth-century African leaders as collaborators and resisters. Though fully cognizant of the historians need for context and the bigger canvass, Shillingtons book is written for a general readership, which hopefully will include many of Lukas descendants. The publishers have done well to provide us with such a fine representation. More than anything else, this book is a timely reminder that the history of our colonial and even pre-colonial period is by no means fully mined, and there is more to be revealed and written up. In an age of few observable heroes, we may do worse that to look for them in our past.! Andy Manson, North-West University, Mafeking 2012

"The inner workings of the colonial system, its inexorable logic, are laid bare in Shillington's work. Even more importantly, it also provides us with a story of a previously largely unrecognised new hero in resistance history." - South African Historical Journal, 2012