History

Is the study of the past , present and future events.

It is a continuous record of important or public events of a particular institution or trend.

Why do we study history?

 To know whom we are

 To be able to identify our enermies and friends
 The past teaches us about the present
 To be able to identify our past mistakes and how to avoid them.
 To be able to know how we became whta we are.
 To know where we came from.

Three organs of history

There are 3 organs of history namely economic organisation, political organisation and social
organisation.

Economic organisation

Refers to the distribution of goods and services in a community

It also refers to how people obtain or got their food

Political organisation

Refers to how people govern themselves and how leaders are chosen

Social organisation

Refers to how people live socially in a community that is their dressing, religion and culture.

Sources of History

Historians agree that there are three main sources, that is, oral tradition, written records and
archaeology.

Oral Tradition

These are verbal messages which are passed by word of mouth beyond a historian’s period. They might
be stories which local people tell about the past.

Advantages of oral tradition

- It gives flesh and colour to the story.

- A historian can ask a question when there is need for clarification.

- It gives information from illiterate societies and where people cannot write OT plays a big role.

- Oral tradition is cheap to obtain.

- One can compare many versions of the same story and come up with a consensus.

- oral tradition provides with the correct pronunciation of names.

- oral tradition provides information on forgotten individuals eg women and children.

Weaknesses/ Disadvantages of OT

- A common weakness is the failure of record chronology, e.g., the use of average reigns/generations for
measuring time. This has a lot of errors, for instance, by referring to years of drought, locusts, etc.

- OT may be known to a certain society only and conditioned by society in which it flourished. It
therefore does not go beyond the boundaries of people’s social setting in which they exist.

- Oral tradition suffers from exaggeration .

- It is subject to loss of memory.

- There is also the language problem and when a third party is involved facts might be distorted.

Archaeology

This is the scientific study of materials of the past cultures.

Advantages of Archaeology

- it complements oral sources, for instance, where oral sources cannot give dates, archaeologists can
establish these through the use of carbon-dating.

- Archaeology can go far back to the history of the people thereby correcting inaccuracies of oral
sources.

Archaeology speaks for documents that cannot speak for themselves, e.g., tools, dagga, pottery and
glass objects.
- It can retrieve history of up to 20 million years.

- Archaeology as a source of history therefore is based on positive statements rather than negative
statements which cannot be proved.

- It gives more reliable information because remains studied are tangible, for example, skeletons.

Disadvantages

- Archaeology is expensive, e.g., tools used to excavate past sites and to process to come up with
credible results are expensive and poor societies cannot afford them.

- It cannot account for population according to gender, ethnicity, age and language.

- It can lead to false conclusion of a people’s culture and social activities, e.g., studied materials can be
carried to another area inhabited by other people and they can be credited for those materials.

- Implements such as iron cannot be dated on their own but in relation to those materials containing
carbon

The scientific investigation in Zimbabwe started around 1890 and archaeology did not give much
account of small states like Mapungubwe but to bigger sites like the Great Zimbabwe,
Dhlodhlo/Danangombe, etc.

Written records

These can be primary or secondary sources. Primary sources consist of information in raw state and this
information is close to the event which it describes. These include eyewitness accounts, diaries,
newspapers and archival records. Secondary sources are based on someone’s interpretation of a
document or opinion.

Advantages

- They provide dates primary sources provide a ready and coherent source.

- They have a long life span and can be stored in libraries and archives.

- They have useful information on events following the colonisation of the country and pre-colonial
times.

- They provide historians with reliable dates as opposed to oral traditions

- Events have chronology and give details.

- They fill the gap left by archaeologists and thus they complement archaeological findings, thus a
historian can come up with a better picture of early history of used properly.

Disadvantages

- They are deeply flawed by racism and ignorance by authors who often show a very low understanding
of the people among whom they lived and operated.

- There is also misconception of African traditional leaders, e.g., healers who were seen by whites as
wizards or witches while those in Europe, doing the same business of healing people, were seen as
doctors.

- Some written documents were written out of context. Those who wrote about African societies chose
to find a certain situation. Anthropologists wrote huge volumes which were based on crude assumptions
about Africa. They collected information and interpreted it according to the politics of the time which
had to justify European supremacy over Africans.

-These written records by European visitors were concerned with showing European technology, failing
to appreciate that the underdeveloped societies were developing at their own pace.

- Censorship deprives the reader of important information. Torsh asserts that in such instances there
may be controlling purposes which may limit or distort the information.

- Written records also face the problem of bias and favour for or against an event or personality. This
bias can be on the basis of the author’s religion, race, ideology, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status,
political affiliation and these militate against objectivity.

- Diaries are by nature brief and lack detail. It is difficult to get more than what is recorded. If one tries to
inquire for more information, one has to look at things in a general context of the concerned people’s
history.

- Written records as a source of history seem to imply that only that which is written is history and it
discredits oral tradition, archaeology, etc., basically on the grounds that they are not written.

- Although written records have been praised for their long lifespan, there is a chance that they might be
destroyed on their way from the primary sources to the archives.