ASL Hours
Library Hours
The lending collection is located in the Mugar Memorial Libary stacks and is available during Mugar’s hours.
To request an out of hours appointment please contact Beth Restrick.
Regular Hours
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Monday – Friday |
9am – 5pm |
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Saturday & Sunday |
Closed |
Library will be closed during Holidays except veteran's Day.
Study Period Extended Hours
Please Note: In the event of a BU weather emergency closing, the African Studies Library will be closed.
Featured Video
IsiZulu professor Zoliswa Mali speaks isiZulu. Video from the BU Teaching Africa Outreach Program.
About This Guide
This library guide is primarily intended for Zulu language learners at Boston University and contains information on library materials, Internet & community resources useful for learning and practicing Zulu language.
Background: Zulu Culture & History
The Zulus by
'A very remarkable people, the Zulu', the British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, said on hearing of a fresh disaster in the war of 1879, 'They defeat our generals; they convert our bishops; they have settled the fate of a great European dynasty'. Remarkable indeed, to have taken on the full might of the British Empire at its height, and won, if not the war, at least some of the battles. This book explains who the Zulus were, and how they achieved the fame as warriors which they enjoy to this day.
ISBN: 9780850458640Publication Date: 1989-01-26
Zulu Identities by
With close to 20 million members, the Zulu are the largest single ethnic group in all of Southern Africa. Their culture is known all over the world. However, defining what lies at the core of a Zulu identity remains a source of great controversy. What does it mean to be Zulu, and therefore African, in today's world? Is being Zulu different now than in the past? This comprehensive and wholly up-to-date reference wrestles with these and many other questions. The book features a stunningly diverse group of close to thirty contributors, universally acknowledged to be the world's leading experts of Zulu culture and history. They discuss the characteristic traditions of a preindustrial people and how they evolved different cultural expressions of Zulu-ness. They examine the legacies of Shaka, the social and political intrigues of Zulu royalty, gender and generational struggles, cultural and symbolic projections, and Zulu spirituality. The book also highlights the debates raging in contemporary South Africa over the manipulation of Zulu heritage and whether it is being exploited for political purposes or for the promotion of eco- and battlefield-tourism. In conclusion, the book contemplates the future of Zulu identity in a unified South Africa, a country that hopes to embrace the forces of globalization. Truly comprehensive and authoritative, Zulu Identities is the definitive volume on the Zulu people, history, and culture.
ISBN: 9780231700580Publication Date: 2009-04-22
Umongo ka Zulu : the marrow of the Zulu nation.Publication Date: 2005
Magema Fuze by
As the author of Abantu Abamnyama Lapa Bavela Ngakona [1922] (trans. The Black People and Whence They Came [1979]), Magema Fuze was a classic South African example of how first-generation converts made the transition from oral to literate cultures, from the homestead to the mission, and from being 'native informants' to being kholwa intellectuals. The kholwa had no secure cultural or political identity, caught as they were in the 'Natal-Zululand divide,' between the promise of full and equal incorporation into colonial society and the ties that bound them to traditional society and culture. This book examines the life of Magema Fuze and suggests that kholwa identity was fashioned through the practice of bricolage: the cobbling together, in indeterminate and sometimes contradictory ways, of elements from both colonial and indigenous cultures. The amakholwa used the instruments of cultural imperialism - namely petitions, letters, books, and newspapers - to create a signature resistance to subjugation and conquest. Magema Fuze's literary life represents a black intellectual tradition whose potential was not realized. Beyond his work as a printer and scribe, it is worth adding another role, namely that Fuze was a popular South African historian who attempted to write histories with intimate resonances that would appeal to his readers and rouse their nationalistic sentiments.
ISBN: 1869141911Publication Date: 2011-01-03
The Tribe That Washed Its Spears by
Adrian Greaves traces the history of the Zulus from their arrival in South Africa - they were not indigenous as were the Koi and San population - and the establishment of Zululand. It describes the violent rise of King Shaka and his colourful successors under whose leadership the warrior nation built its fiercesome reputation.
ISBN: 9781848848412Publication Date: 2014-01-19
The Maphumulo Uprising by
In 1906, the authorities in the colony of Natal put down, with great loss of life, an uprising that has become known as the Zulu or Bhambatha rebellion. Accounts have tended to concentrate on Bhambatha, the man who led the guerrilla war in the Nkandla forest, but this book shifts the focus to the Maphumulo area where two famous chiefs led their people in violent resistance to the colonial militia. This account also goes beyond the physical conflict. It examines the rituals that preceded it and the life and death struggle in the courts which followed as the colonial authorities sought to make an example of those who, they alleged, had used not just African weapons, but African medicine and superstition/religion to drive the white man out of Africa. The Maphumulo Uprising introduces many of the social and political issues around ethnicity, identity, and nationalism that have been such a feature of the subsequent history of KwaZulu-Natal.
ISBN: 1869140486Publication Date: 2005-09-01
Remembering the Rebellion by
Remembering the Rebellion narrates and commemorates the Zulu or Bhambatha rebellion of 1906 with riveting anecdotes, maps, and illustrations, many of them previously unpublished. At that time, the people of KwaZulu-Natal, already suffering the material and social consequences of colonialism, were further provoked by the imposition of a poll tax and the official determination to treat all protests against the tax as defiance. The resistance that followed was put down with uncompromising violence, but the memory of rebellion became an inspiration to those who continued the struggle against racial exploitation in South Africa.
ISBN: 9781869141172Publication Date: 2006-10-01
Shaka's Children by
A FASCINATING REAPPRAISAL OF A PROUD AND INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE AT CRITICAL JUNCTURE IN THEIR HISTORY History has portrayed Shaka, founder of the Zulu nation, as a pitiless and savage conqueror. Yet British fortune-seekers of the 1820s found Shaka's Zulus a dignified people whose martial qualities were tempered by generosity and hospitality. Within a few years, as Zulu territory was threatened by expanding colonial populations, all this had changed. Taylor's resonant and acute account conjures the atmosphere of the past through close adherence to contemporary oral sources. The Zulu world, its passions, intrigues and ideals, the sly white traders, the squabbling Boers, the thunderous battles and the bright African landscape rise fresh and startling from the page. Tribal orders are re-emerging in South Africa's first multi-racial democracy. Yet the Zulu – in the vanguard eighty years ago of the formation of the ANC – are now seen as rebels against the new order. Their past and their place in South Africa's history has taken on an urgent contemporary relevance. "Taylor does nothing to dispel the savage grandeur of the legend; but he manages to keep in our minds, throughout the saga proud and bitter, the fact that the Zulu were never more or less human than the white men."JAN MORRIS, 'Independent' "An important book. Taylor refuses to follow the politically correct course and the outcome is refreshing and illuminating."NATAL, 'Daily News' "A vivid, largely sympathetic popular history."NEW STATESMAN & SOCIETY "The 'Great Men' theory of history has been out of favour for many years now but, as Stephen Taylor's enthralling book shows, it has to be dusted down again if South Africa is to be properly considered."SCOTSMAN
ISBN: 9780006384687Publication Date: 1996-05-01
Myth of Iron by
Over the decades we have heard a great deal about Shaka, the most famous - or infamous - of Zulu leaders. It may come as a surprise, therefore, that we do not know when he was born, nor what he looked like, nor precisely when or why he was assassinated. In Shaka's case, even these most basic facts of any person's biography remain locked in obscurity. Meanwhile, Shaka's public image is seen as either monstrous or heroic. Shaka's image is a 'myth of iron' that is so intriguing, so dramatic, so archetypal, and sometimes so politically useful, that few have subjected it to proper scrutiny. Myth of Iron: Shaka in History is the first book-length scholarly study to be published. It lays out, as far as possible, all the available evidence - mainly hitherto under-utilized Zulu oral testimonies, supported by other documentary sources - and decides, item by item, legend by legend, what exactly we can know about Shaka's reign. The picture that emerges in this meticulously researched and absorbing 'anti-biography' is very different from the popular narrative we are used to.
ISBN: 9781869140472Publication Date: 2006-02-01
Head, African Studies Library
Beth Restrick
Contact:
African Studies Library
6th floor, Mugar Memorial Library
Mon-Fri, 9am- 5pm
6th floor, Mugar Memorial Library
Mon-Fri, 9am- 5pm
617-353-3726
Subjects: African Studies