The Nightwatchman - by Hlonipha Mokoena

Book Synopsis

Drawing on a rich archive of colonial photography, Mokoena explores how images of African policemen and nightwatchmen in colonial South Africa challenged traditional narratives of oppression, revealing how uniform and portraiture transformed the black male figure into an aesthetic subject worthy of admiration.

This illustrated collection of essays brings into focus African men in colonial uniforms as a subject of portraiture. It extends the literature on colonial ethnographic photography by creating a narrative of nightwatchman portraiture from the rich archive of images. While a genre of photography developed around images of the 'Zulu warrior' after the defeat of the English at Isandlwana, Hlonipha Mokoena argues that the spectacle of the Zulu male body was inaugurated after the last Zulu king, Cetshwayo, was photographed as a posing subject.

Much research has focussed on the African man as a functionary of settler power; these essays shift debates about how the body moves in history. Placed in uniform, the male subject becomes aestheticised and admired. Mokoena focuses on the sartorial selection processes and co-optation of colonial aesthetic culture that constructed the idea of the Nonqgqayi or nightwatchman as a fully formed photographic presence. The beauty captured in these images upends conceptions of colonial photography as a tool of oppression.

In its focus on the figure of the black and brown fighting man, The Nightwatchman offers an innovative work on the history of portraiture in colonial South Africa and new avenues for the interpretation of visual representations of the black male figure.

Review Quotes

"Nightwatchman is in a class of its own. At the centre of Mokoena's original book are aesthetically attired shapeshifters whose agency, prowess and beauty Africanised colonial culture. This is a provocative and powerful story."-- "Benedict Carton, George Mason University"

"In a creative and illuminating look at the role of African men in colonial armies and police forces, Hlonipha Mokoena makes a compelling argument about why these men served in institutions bent on the oppression of African societies. To call them mercenaries, Mokoena argues, is to miss the complexity and density of the motivations that shaped their actions; it is to miss the ways in which these men carved out opportunities in colonial settings"-- "Jacob Dlamini, Associate Professor, Department of History, Princeton University"

"Mokoena invokes the figure of the nightwatchman to drive a project of moving through and beyond colonial abjection. Exploring the traces of aestheticised bodies, sartorial choices, desire and curiosity in provocative and oblique ways, the book rocks our sense of the possibilities of the available archive."-- "Carolyn Hamilton, Professor, Department of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town"

About the Author

Hlonipha Mokoena is Director of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She is the author of Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual.