In pursuit of the mysterious Chobona tribe, the author undertakes a lengthy examination of the absurdity of the concept of race, writes Jane Rosenthal, in her review of The Side of the Sun at Noon by Hazel Crampton (Jacana)
‘The side of the sun at noon’ was a phrase used by the Nama people to describe the whereabouts of a great river. For those of us who live in the southern hemisphere this, of course, means “the north”, and the Nama told this to Simon van der Stel at the Cape more than a century after white people started living there. The river was the Gariep, which used to be known as the Great River, then the Orange River, before it got its Khoi name back.
Although this great waterway, South Africa’s biggest river, is central to the book’s narrative, it is not the centre of Hazel Crampton’s quest. Her search is for a people, said to live beyond the great river, called the Chobona. They are first mentioned in the meticulously kept journal of Jan van Riebeeck, the first Dutch commander at the Cape, who was told about them by a Khoi chief called Chaihantima, whose people lived somewhere east of Cape Town.
The person from whose lips he heard the story was Eva, also called Krotoa, who was the translator for Van Riebeeck and Van der Stel, and she plays quite a role in this book in which the writer is at pains to defend this clever young Khoi woman who died at 32 after an eventful life.
Her detailed narrative is composed of many such complex speculations; she delights in tracing linguistic clues, and quotes extensively from contemporary sources. She makes much use of maps hand-drawn by herself from earlier versions, and annotated to explain routes taken. She enlivens this already interesting material with some sharp critique of earlier historians, whom she castigates for sexism, racism and general narrow-mindedness.
Crampton pursues the Chobona obsessively in the welter of journeys undertaken over two centuries, but her quest is not only to see whether she could find these reputedly pale-skinned, rich, skilful people; her book is also a long examination of the absurdity of the concept of race.
Full review by Jane Rosenthal: see Mail & Guardian
