Tools & tillage: a journal on the history of the implements of cultivation and other agricultural processes (3.1976/1979)

100

O. F. RAUM

1851: “From the grassy mountains of the
Zuurberg we descended into the valley. Some
Kaffirs were shot and taken including the
daughter of Macome (scil. Chief Sandile’s
brother and commander of the Xhosa army).
The use of several broad-bladed wooden
spades found in the hut puzzled our soldiers,
but one of them decided to call it (sic) a pad-
dle” (Baines II 272).
This historical survey shows that the Xhosa
used digging sticks and possibly the
Fig. 1. The Xhosa Spade
from Eastern Cape,
South Africa (Goldswain
p. 102).
Der Spaten der Xhosa im
Kapland, Siidafrika
(Goldswain 102).
kneewood hoe in cultivating. It is the wooden
paddle or oar-shaped spade (or spadoons as
Colenso calls it)1 that is here discussed: it may
have been either single or double-bladed.
Soga’s description of it is apt: “the spade is
flattened and fire-hardened as well as shar-
pened at the digging-end and round
(presumably at the handle) for holding it; it
has the shape of dumb-bells” (Soga 39). Soga
calls it i-kuba; this must be an error for Kropf
(1915) calls the tool for weeding um-hlakula
(from uku-hlakula, to till, Urbantu klakula)
and the hoe with the tanged or pronged hlade
i-kuba. Gitywa does not mention the spade.
The only woodwork he describes is that of
pipes (Gitywa 167).
The question arises whether a similar tool is
known elsewhere in South Africa. The basic
similarity of Nguni cultures makes us expect it
among the peoples belonging to this ethnic
division. In fact H. Baumann credits the
Nguni in general with the wooden spade
(Baumann 1940, 114). Hunter reports of the
Mpondo: “Old men told me that they used

the fire-hardened stick as hoes (sic) 60-70.
years ago” (i.e. circa 1870) (Hunter 74). The
same author repeats in 1969 that the Mpondo
cultivated millet and maize with a digging
stick as late as the 19th century (Wilson 1969 I,
114). Hammond-Tooke says about the Bhaca:
“Formerly implements for cultivation were
crude in the extreme being practically con-
fined to a digging stick sharpened at both
ends” (Hammond-Tooke 16). The Xhosa
spadoon was certainly a more elaborate tool.
Further north Cowley notes that “some
(Zulus) used the wooden hoe in Shaka’s or
Senzangakhona’s time” (c. 1790-1800) but he
gives no details as to the shape of this tool
(Cowley 25), nor do Bryant or Krige give any
information on it. But Callaway refers to an
old wooden tool, not crude at all, since it was
“shaped like a human hand. It was called
u-hlakulo and had sometimes a hand at either
end” (Callaway 21), surely an interesting du-
plication of the Xhosa double-bladed spa-
doon. A wooden tool was also known among
the Swazi. Kuper says rather ambiguously:
“Until the plough was accepted ... the chief
implement was the hoe made by native smiths
... but they were scarce. Those without hoes
used digging sticks of very hard wood,
pointed at one end, heated and shaped like
hoes (sic)” (Kuper 137). As the terms pick-
axe, hoes, and digging stick seem to be used as
equivalent terms in some of these references,
some caution is required in interpreting the
evidence. Kramer refers to the “colloquial
synonymity in English of weeding and hoe-
ing” (Kramer 6, 46).
The wooden spade differs greatly from the
Sotho tilling implement, the iron hoe. Al-
ready Casalis observed that “Thembu and
Xhosa dug the ground with a small wooden
spade” which contrasted with “the well-made
hoes with oval iron blade inserted in the
handle by means of a thorn-like extension
used by the Southern Sotho, Tswana and