Jan Tzatzoe or Dyani Tshatshu: personal, political, and historical consequences of naming in African history
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[“Oh, you mean, Tshatshu,” the middle-aged man stated emphatically. He
emphasized and then drew out each syllable in a deeply resonant manner that I had not heard before: Tsh-aaa Tsh-uuu.“Of course, I know who he was.” Our conversation had begun a few minutes earlier. In the winter of 2011 I had found my way to Grahamstown, in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, for the National Arts Festival. I had been invited to present my recently published book, A Living Man from Africa: Jan Tzatzoe, Xhosa Chief and Missionary, and the Making of Nineteenth-Century South Africa. The book tells the story of Jan Tzatzoe, an African leader and intermediary who flourished in the European colonial world of the missionary Reverend Read, who helped raise him from boyhood, and the African world of his father, Kote Tzatzoe, chief of the amaNtinde lineage of the Xhosa state, to whose people he eventually returned.]
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