The Nightwatchman: Essays on Portraiture and the Black Male Figure in Colonial South Africa

The Nightwatchman: Representing Black Men in Colonial South Africa brings into focus African men in colonial uniforms as a subject of portraiture.While colonial governments co-opted and conscripted Africans into military and policing services, it was after the Zulu defeat of the English in the battle of Isandlwana that a genre of photography developed around images of the ‘Zulu warrior’ and ‘Zulu policeman’.In this illustrated collection of essays, Hlonipha Mokoena extends the literature on colonial ethnographic photography by creating a narrative of nightwatchman portraiture from the rich archive of images.Although the origins of this genre lay in the representation of ‘Fingoes’ (amaMfengu) during the frontier wars, she argues that the spectacle of the Zulu male body was inaugurated after the last Zulu king, Cetshwayo, was photographed as a posing subject.While much research has focused on the African man employed in emasculating labour or as a functionary of settler power, this book