Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 4:2.211-240(1989). ®John BenjaminsB.V.

, Amsterdam
Not to be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

THE ORIGINS OF FANAGALO

Raj end Mesthrie

University of Cape Town

This paper examines, and refutes, the currently most popular hypothesis
concerning the origin of Fanagalo, namely, that it arose on the plantation
fields of Natal among indentured East Indian migrants who arrived there
from 1860 onwards. Can a pidgin be initiated by a group of migrants from
differing linguistic backgrounds in a plantation situation, and still remain
in widespread use without showing any substrate influences? If the Indian
origin hypothesis is correct, this would indeed be the case: a "crystallized"
southern African Pidgin, stable for about a hundred years, would have
been created in the sugar plantations of Natal by migrant indentured
Indian workers without any tangible influences from any of the five or so
Indie and Dravidian languages involved. However, structural and lexical
evidence indicates otherwise. Written sources (a first-hand account by an
English settler from about 1905, and two published accounts by an English
missionary) suggest that the use of Fanagalo in Natal predated the arrival
of Indian immigrants by at least ten years. Regarding the origins of
Fanagalo, one other viable alternative is examined — the Eastern Cape in
the early 1800s. The conclusion is that the most likely site for Fanagalo's
genesis was Natal in the mid-nineteenth century.

1. Background, Theories of Origin, and Attitudes

Fanagalo (henceforth F)1 shows the effects of contact between Ger-

manic languages (Afrikaans and English) and Southeast Bantu languages
(specifically the Nguni languages: Zulu and — to a lesser extent — Xhosa).
Within South Africa it is chiefly spoken in two provinces, Natal and Trans-
vaal. It is the language used between employer and employee in some
urban work places, on many farms and in homes, and in certain situations
in the gold and diamond mines of the Witwatersrand. Because of this latter
function, F has been comitted to print in the form of various manuals put
212 RAJEND MESTHRIE

out by mining and state corporations. There is also a language laboratory

course available to newcomers at the mines (Erasmus & Baucom 1976).
The Miners' Dictionary (previously the Miners' Companion), which is
issued at regular intervals (last revision 1985), reports the following regard-
ing the use of F (1985:iv):
It is not intended that Fanakalo should supersede any of the pure Bantu
languages which are always used on ceremonial occasions. However, in the
mining industry there are employees speaking approximately 15 European
languages and 44 Bantu languages, and Fanakalo has enabled the industry
to overcome the difficult problem of communication. Productivity and
safety require every European employee to avail himself of the opportu-
nity of learning Fanakalo as rapidly as possible so as to be able to converse
with Bantu employees and to give them clear and correct instructions.

A more critical overview of the use and status of F in the mines, and of
the ideology underlying the choice of a pidgin as the medium of interaction,
can be found in Brown (1988). He presents the following statistics based on
a sample of 142 African workers in the Rand Mines group regarding their
choice of language (1988:50):
LANGUAGE TO COLLEAGUES TO SUPERVISORS TO FRIENDS
English 9 39 12
Afrikaans 5 50 5
Fanakalo 90 63 40
Bantu languages 62 9 128
In some cases, the totals add up to more than 142, because workers
switched codes in some situations. [Table reprinted by permission of Social
Dynamics.]

Because workers are drawn from various parts of South Africa (includ-
ing the so-called homelands) and from countries such as Malawi, Zim-
babwe, and Mozambique, a knowledge of F has spread within South Africa
and well beyond it (see Ferraz 1980). The biggest gap in our knowledge of
the pidgin is that the only available descriptions are based on master-ser-
vant discourse, written from a colonial — and frequently racist — viewpoint
(Bold 1977, Aitken-Cade 1951 [the worst example], Hopkin-Jenkins 1947,
Lloyd n.d., Miners' Companion, and so forth). 2 Whether the F used by
Black workers in the mines for "integrative" and "expressive" functions
with friends is any different from that of master-servant contacts (as creolis-
tics leads us to expect) has still to be investigated. An example of F as used
in a non-master-servant context among people of Indian descent in Natal is
 THE ORIGINS OF FANAGALO 213

given in the appendix.

Linguistically, F is typical of pidgins in that it cannot be classified in
terms of existing language groupings — it is not quite Germanic or Nguni in
structure. Basing his analysis on publications existing at the time, Cole
(1953:4) estimated F's lexical component to be "30% ...of European origin,
the proportion of English to Afrikaans being roughly four to one." The
remaining seventy percent is of Nguni (chiefly Zulu) origin.
Structurally, F is SVO (not surprising for a pidgin), and it leans more
i in the direction of English than Nguni. It has none of the agglutinative rich-
ness of Nguni — the system of noun prefixes, verb concords, and adjectival
and other concords (see Cole 1953). The order adjective-noun is common
to F, English, and Afrikaans, while Nguni languages have the reverse
order. In these respects, Heine (1970:48) is off the mark in classifying F as
a Bantu language.
Two of the many names by which the language is known, Isilolo and
Chilapalapa (in Zimbabwe), point to two of its other grammatical charac-
teristics: the overuse of the Zulu demonstrative lo as an article in F, and the
use of the proximal deictic particle lapha of Zulu (as either proximal or
remote in F). These are not the only derogatory names for the pidgin. It is
also known as Silunguboi 'language used by Europeans to servant "boys'",
Basic Bantu, Mine Kafir, Kitchen Kafir, Kitchen Zulu, Isikula 'language of
coolies' (discussed below), and so on.
On account of F's associations with colonial racism and cheap labor, its
denial to employees of access to the economic power of English, and
because of exaggerated claims on its behalf in previous times, it is not sur-
prising that F should be denigrated strongly by intellectuals. Bold (1977:4)
and Hopkin-Jenkins (1947), for example, characterize it as the lingua
franca of South Africa and "Bantu Africa," respectively. Fears expressed
by some academics (e.g., Ngcongwane 1985) that F will somehow make
inroads into the Zulu language are, however, unfounded, for the pidgin
shows no signs of creolizing, and seems slightly on the decline in Natal.
Regarding the origin of F, there are three theories:
a) It was first spoken in the Eastern Cape and Natal, between the pre-
dominantly English-speaking settlers and speakers of Nguni languages
(Hopkin-Jenkins 1947, Bold 1977). This would place its origins roughly
between 1820 and 1850.
b) It stems from a patois that developed in the diamond and gold
mines of Kimberley and the Witwatersrand out of contact between workers
214 RAJEND MESTHRIE

speaking several distinct languages (Lloyd n.d., Miners' Companion 1953).

The genesis of F within this theory would be after 1870.
c) It originated in Natal from contact between indentured and trader
Indians and speakers of Zulu and English, with the Indians providing the
impetus for its early development and diffusion (Cole 1953). F would there-
fore have originated in the 1860s.
This third conjecture of Cole's, based on Trapp (1908), is mentioned as
a fair possibility by almost every subsequent commentator on F (e.g., van
Wyk 1978:50-1, Ngcongwane 1985, Kloss 1978:22, Miners' Dictionary
1969, Ferraz 1984), each recycling giving the theory more credence, without
adding specific empirical support. 3 For example, whereas the Miners' Dic-
tionary in its various editions prior to Cole's article asserts that F got its
start in the mines, more recent editions (e.g., 1985:iv) state instead that "It
is generally considered that Fanakalo originated as a result of attempts by
Indians employed in the Natal sugar industry to learn English and Zulu at
the same time."
It will be shown that despite the plausibility of the latter theory, it can
be discarded on the basis of new linguistic and historical evidence. Some of
the evidence, unknown to Cole, that lends credence to his hypothesis will
be presented first, and then weighed against the overwhelming counter-evi-
dence. In sections 4 and 5 the other theories will be examined for their his-
torical plausibility, on the basis of the available archival evidence.

2. Fanagalo in the Natal Indian Community

Trapp (1908) points to the early identification of F among Zulus as an

"Indian" phenomenon, resulting in the name Isikula. This name is based on
English coolie and the Zulu class 7 prefix, isi-, which denotes, inter alia,
language names. Trapp (1908:508) says further that "Isikula, mainly used
by Indians when conversing with Zulus, consists of Zulu and English" (my
translation). Without formulating an explicit theory of its origins, Trapp
(1908:510-1) goes on to discuss structural simplification of Zulu construc-
tions and morphology in F as if they were Indian innovations; witness
expressions like the following (my translation):
...u-boni-ni? = 'what do you see?'; u-vela-pi? — 'where do you come
from?'; u-fika-ninn = 'when do you come?'
These forms were not acceptable to the Indian. He prefers to use new
forms. He produces yini from the sentence ku-yi-ni, from u-pi umuntu
'where (is) the man?', he simply takes upi for a general 'where'...
 THE ORIGINS OF FANAGALO 215

Cole (1953:2-3) takes up this argument explicitly:

that the Zulus should have called it the "Coolie language" suggests that the
Indians were its originators. The only argument against this is that
Fanagalo neither contains any Indian words — a point to which Trapp him-
self drew attention — nor shows any other perceptible evidence of the
Indian languages used in South Africa, principally Tamil, Hindi, Telugu,
Gujerati and Urdu. But it must be remembered that his own language was
of no economic value to the Indian at that time. He had perforce to make
himself understood to the Englishman and the Zulu, neither of whom
spoke his language, or was even remotely interested therein. It follows
therefore that the Indian, having acquired limited vocabularies of both
English and Zulu, would have mixed the two in attempting to be under-
stood... 4

Trapp and Cole are correct in suggesting that F was an important

means of out-group communication for Indians in nineteenth- and twen-
tieth-century Natal. Oral evidence suggests that it was used by some over-
seers and plantation managers to communicate with some of the Indian
field hands up to at least the 1940s. This can be deduced not only from
direct questions addressed to a few old informants, but from the narrative
of an old man, recounting aspects of his life. In relating his experiences as
a plantation worker (in the post-indentureship period) he used English, but
in quoting the words of the estate manager, he switched unconsciously to F
(Mr. Perumal Govender of Umkomaas, personal communication, July
1985).
Some interviewees who entered rural mission schools in the 1930s
claimed that F (which they call "Zulu") was the language of communication
between teachers of European descent and Indian pupils in the earliest
stages. It would appear, then, to be the medium through which English was
introduced to pupils in at least a few rural schools. One informant still
recalls being taught as follows in the first few days of school (Mr. Gov-
indsamy Pillay of Umkomaas, personal communication, November 1985):
Ai chena sabona, chena good morning. Ai chena Singis, chena English, ai
chena slala, chena sit down...
['Don't say sabona, say good morning, don't say singis, say English, don't
say slala, say sit down...']

Even today it is rare to find elderly Natal Indians who do not have a fluent
command of F. In rural areas it was not uncommon, until recently, to find
Indians who were fluent in an Indian language and F, but not English.5
When a speaker of a Dravidian language met a speaker of an Indie language,
216 RAJEND MESTHRIE

communication would in a few cases have to be conducted in F. Higher

up on the social scale, this practice was also sometimes necessary: I am
informed of an occasion in the 1950s when two women — one an Indian-
born Gujarati speaker who had settled in Natal, the other a South-African
born Tamil speaker — met as patients in adjacent beds in a London
hospital, and their sole medium of communication was F (Mrs. Sita
Dhupelia, personal communication, December 1983). Such use of F
between Indians was not the norm, however, because it was offset by a fair
degree of bilingualism that developed on some estates (usually in Tamil and
Bhojpuri — the so called Hindi of Natal) and by the acquisition of English
by some men, especially in the towns. Furthermore, some overseers and
managers on the estates had a knowledge of an Indian language (usually
Hindi, less commonly Tamil). A phrasebook aimed at managers and over-
seers, using English and three Indian languages, was published in Durban
at the turn of the nineteenth century (Dunning 1901). We can conclude that
the tertiary hybridization which Whinnom (1971) associates with "classic"
pidginization was thus of limited occurrence among Indians in Natal.
The use of F among Natal Indians is on the decline. It is not even
always required for the function it had come to be typical of in the second
half of this century: the language between white or Indian employer and
Zulu employee, whether in a domestic or public capacity. More and more
of such employees have some grasp of English, especially the limited English
used in a master-servant paradigm. Some employers continue using the
pidgin even to those employees who know some English, either out of habit
or to enforce a sense of distance and authority (see Ferraz 1984:114 and
Heine 1970:50-2). Competence in F is decreasing among younger Indians
in the cities, and even in the rural areas the language used between young
Zulus and Indians at play is quite often English.

3. Arguments against the Hypothesis of Cole and Trapp

Having presented evidence that F did indeed play a significant role in

the history of Indians in Natal, I will nevertheless show in this section that
the structural and lexical evidence suggests that we must look elsewhere for
its origins. Although Trapp and Cole attach a great deal of significance to
the term Isikula, it does not necessarily shed light on the origins of F. It
suggests that in the observation of Zulu speakers, Indians were the most
common users of the language. Indian speakers in much of Natal until
 THE ORIGINS OF FANAGALO 217

today refer to F as "Zulu," some naively believing it to be Zulu, others

drawing a distinction between "Zulu" ( = F) and "High Zulu" (= Zulu).
A comparison of F and South African Indian English (henceforth
SAIE) shows that while the latter is permeated with influences at all levels
of syntactic and lexical structure from Indie and Dravidian substrates, the
former shows little or no trace of such influences. It needs to be established
that such comparisons are valid. I have argued elsewhere (forthcoming)
that the genesis of SAIE must lie in both the plantation and the classroom.
The dialect has developed under a process of language shift which is cur-
rently near completion. On account of varying degrees of education in
English, exposure to educated English varieties, and age (which determines
one's LI), there are a number of subvarieties, which collectively resemble a
post-creole continuum, although this has still to be demonstrated. Features
characteristic of the "extreme" variety of SAIE — the basilect — are
indeed reminiscent of pidgin-creole cycles. The SAIE data gives firm sup-
port to Andersen's (1980:291) assertion that L2 acquisition under cir-
cumstances not usually conducive to pidginization (in Whinnom's [1971]
sense of tertiary hybridization) does produce some of the syntactic features
that emerge in pidgins and Creoles. I have accordingly characterized SAIE
as a creoloid (see Piatt 1975 and Trudgill 1983:106 regarding this term).
The point is that SAIE is not based solely on colonial Natal English. In
its earlier stages, especially, it is truly the meeting point between "English
English" and several Indian languages. In this sense it is partly a creation,
not just an imitation; it is a reflection, perhaps, of the proportion of lan-
guage learners to native models of English. From 1904 onwards, the census
records show the number of Indians in Natal exceeded that of white English
speakers (Brookes & Webb 1965:85). In the latter year, for example, there
were 100,918 Indians as against 97,109 whites in the colony. If we are to
conceive of F as an Indian creation, then SAIE is a reasonable entity with
which it can be compared in terms of syntax and lexis.
3.1. Syntax
3.1.1. Word Order
The canonical type for South African English (henceforth SAE) and F
is SVO, for Indie and Dravidian it is SOV. Although SAIE is basically
SVO, it differs from SAE and F in its greater tolerance of OV features.
(For an in-depth discussion, see Mesthrie 1987.) SAIE allows a great
many clauses to end in a verb — far more than SAE and other varieties of
218 RAJEND MESTHRIE

English, in which such sentences are, according to Steele (1978:592), "a

very special word order."
(1) All I met after so long.
'I met everyone after a long time.'
(2) Bombay mangoes Dan bought one time I saw.
'Once Dan bought Bombay mangoes. I saw them myself.'
Topicalization is certainly less marked in SAIE than in "English
English," although I would not go so far as to suggest that the SAIE basilect
is typologically distinct from standard English in terms of topic prominence
(see Ritchie 1986 for such a claim regarding Singapore English). In addi-
tion, SAIE abounds in formulaic patterns comprising Adj-Object Noun-
Sub j Pro-V, or Intensifier-Adj-SubjPro-V.
(3) So rude you are.
(4) Too sweet it was.
(5) Lakker ('nice') sister you got.
This subtype of topicalization is so common as to be unmarked in the infor-
mal speech of many people. To use the SVO order here would be to mark
the sentence as (incongruously) formal.
The main effect of the clashing OV-VO typologies is felt in other areas
of SAIE syntax: preposed relatives or quasi-correlatives (6, 7), kinship
titles often following proper nouns (8, 9), quasi-postpositions (10,11), spe-
cial emphatic coordinators (12,13), subject deletion (14,15), and sentence-
final position of clauses with modal content (16, 17).
(6) Which car they supposed to give us, someone else got it.
'The car which they were supposed to give us has been given to
someone else.'
(7) Which one I put in the jar, that one is best.
'The pickles which I put in the jar are the best.'
(8) Roshni-aunty runs a shop.
'Aunt Roshni runs a shop.'
(9) Vasu-mama is coming today.
'Uncle Vasu is coming today,'
(10) I'm going Tongaat side.
'I'm going towards Tongaat.'
(11) Night-part I fright, baba.
'I become frightened at night.' (Baba is an epithet expressing
emphasis, literally 'father'.)
 THE ORIGINS OF FANAGALO 219

(12) I made rice too, I made roti too.

'I made both rice and roti.'
(13) Cats I like too, dogs I like too.
'I like both cats and dogs.'
(14) Was nice, eh!
'It was nice, wasn't it?'
(15) Can't give one plate food too.
'You can't even give me a plate of food.'
(16) We'll have to work hard, looks like.
'It looks like we'll have to work hard.'
(17) They coming now, must be.
'They must be coming now.'
F shows no such tendencies towards OV syntax, not even in the sixty
"Isikula" sentences listed in Trapp (1908) or in the speech of the oldest F
speakers of Indian descent today (see appendix). In the following sen-
tences, taken from Trapp (1908), genitives and possessive pronouns follow
the head noun (18, 19), subject deletion is nonexistent, and prepositions
(20, 21) rather than postpositions occur.
(18) Upi lo kudhla ka mahashi?
where the food of horses
'Where is the horse's food?'
(19) Bona funa mali ka tina.
they want money of us
'They want our money.'
(20) Yini wena tshena nga yena?
what you say with he
'What are you saying to him?'
(21) Landa lo nyuspeper Iapa posofis.
take the newspaper to post office
'Take the newspaper to the post office.'
(Lapa is derived from the Zulu demonstrative.)
It is clear that whereas SAIE can plausibly be described as a meeting
ground between OV and VO, F — even in its earlier stages — cannot. 6
3.1.2. Reduplication
F is unusual among pidgins in that it shows few signs of reduplication.
In the small corpus presented by Trapp (1908) it does not occur at all; nor
is it mentioned in the grammatical section of any of the other books on
220 RAJEND MESTHRIE

Fanagalo. Ferraz (1980:216-7) gives some examples of reduplication in

Chilapalapa, the equivalent of F in Zimbabwe, but concedes that it is not a
common feature. In narrative discourse in Natal F, it is possible to repeat
phrases to emphasize duration, as in mina baleka, mina baleka, mina baleka
T m running, running, running', but "classic" reduplicative pidgin patterns
(see Todd 1974:55) are rare. One common exception in Natal F is manje
rnanje 'now now, immediately' (possibly calqued on Afrikaans nou-nou
'now now, presently, immediately' or the SAE equivalent now-now). In my
taped corpus (see appendix) reduplication was insignificant: the two occur-
rences being Mina gula, gula T was sick, sick' (i.e., 'for a long time') and
mangane mangane 'small small' (i.e., 'many small [children]'). They involve
reduplication as a rare discourse strategy, rather than as a popular lexical-
functional option.
SAIE, on the other hand, abounds in reduplication on the Indie pat-
tern to convey degrees of intensity, frequency, emphasis, and distribution
(Mesthrie, forthcoming). The pattern extends to adjectives (big-big 'very
big' or 'many and big'), adverbs (quick-quick 'very quickly'), verbs (swear-
swear 'swear a great deal'), participles (sweeping-sweeping 'over-sweeping'),
numerals {two-two 'two each'), and WH-words (who-who 'who of several
people').
The grammar of Vietnamese Pidgin French, Tai Boi, shows that redu-
plication is not mandatorily carried over from substrate to pidgin, all the
more surprising in view of the fact it is virtually the only morphological fea-
ture of Vietnamese (Reinecke 1971:51). In the case under study, one would
nevertheless have to account for its appearance in the one new language
(SAIE) and not in the other (F).
3.1.3. Articles
It is the preponderance of lo as a definite article and demonstrative
pronoun that gives F one of its many aliases Isilolo ('the lo lo language').
The lo also occurs in the name Fanagalo ('like this', i.e., pertaining to the
instructions of the master to the servant). It is used with proper names (Lo
Jane 'Jane'), and it may occasionally function as the equivalent of an English
indefinite article, as in (22) below (from Bold 1977:39).
(22) Faga lo litye pambili ku lo wil.
put a stone before LOC the wheel
'Put a stone in front of the wheel.'
The context, which pidgin languages are generally heavily reliant on, pre-
sumably enables one to distinguish lo litye as indefinite but lo wil as definite
 THE ORIGINS OF FANAGALO 221

in this instance. The indefinite is more usually expressed by the numeral

muye 'one* or numeral plus definite article muye lo. The impetus for the
overuse of lo does not come from Indie or Dravidian, for these languages
do not generally mark definiteness if it is clear from the context, as shown
by (23) (from Tamil) and (24) (from Bhojpuri).
(23) Pustakatte etu.
book-ACC pick up
'Pick up the book.'
(24) Adml ke dekhlas.
man ACC he-saw
'He saw the man.'
More compelling evidence comes from SAIE, in which the omission of arti-
cles is fairly common:
(25) Got clean cloth? This one is dirty, (a > 0 )
(26) You must keep one pants for river, (the > 0 )
This basilectal feature appears in the writing of some university students as
well: a common example from students of English is Poet says... for 'The
poet says...'
The few syntactic similarities that are shared by F and SAIE (copula
deletion, optional marking of plurality, preference for parataxis over subor-
dination) would appear to be a result of language learning and discourse
organization under imperfect conditions, rather than manifestations of any
specific substrate influences.
3.2. Lexis
3.2.1. Loanwords in Fanagalo and Indian languages
F and the Indian languages of Natal show a great deal of influence
from English, less so from Afrikaans. Quite often the same English word
appears as a loan in F and in several Indian languages of Natal. I shall show
that where such words occur in F, Bhojpuri, and Tamil the diversity of
phonetic realizations is suggestive of independent borrowings, and is
incompatible with Cole's idea of Indians mixing together the limited vocab-
ularies of Zulu and English at their disposal.7 For example, if a Bhojpuri-
speaking indentured worker has learned the English term table and incor-
porated it into his language as tebal, it can be reasonably expected that he
would use the same form if he "develops" F. The F form, however, is
222 RAJEND MESTHRIE

taful(a) (derived from Afrikaans tafel). Furthermore, as Trapp's data,

which was gathered while Indian immigration was still occurring, is consist-
ent with the F of today, we may conclude that relexification of any sort is
unlikely to have taken place. 8 Table 1 gives a list of early loans in Indian
languages (some of which were already adopted in the rural dialects in
India prior to 1860), and their divergent forms in F:

Table 1 A Comparison of Loanwords in Fanagalo, Bhojpuri, and Tamil9

SOUTH AFRICAN
BHOJPURI FANAGALO TAMIL INDIAN ENGLISH

tebal tafula teibal table

aspatal spedlela aspatri hospital
sak saga (mute) sack
sakis sokis sakes socks
dok|e doktela daktar doctor
bate bo tela bajar(vanne) butter
tern (skati) (mani) time
rastd risiti rasid receipt
botal bodlela buddi bottle
bret (sinkwa) (kade roti) bread
binis bontshis binz/binz koje beans
motar motokhali motare car
painaphal painap painapal pineapple
trein (gari) stimela (vaodO train
tesan steshan teshan station
karat wortela/kalot karat carrot
shet (kamij) hembe (kamsi) shirt
pulls poyisa pulis-kare police
pilSk palangu plange (veru) plank, wood
(baltf) bakede bagiti bucket
silln shelen wurusiling shilling
afkaran fakuleni afkaran half-a-crown
ekkaran shlanu anjisiling crown
paun pondo manja-paun/savren pound/sovereign
das silin shumi anjaruba ten shillings
Jobag eGoli Jonzbange Johannesburg
damola mishinin (sakare ale) mill

The words in column 1, for example, are the approximations of the

English words in column 4, achieved by Bhojpuri speakers in terms of their
own language. These same speakers use the F forms in column 2 when
 THE ORIGINS OF FANAGALO 223

conversing in that language. Although one cannot be conclusive about this,

it seems unlikely that speakers learning both English and "Zulu" would be
able to come up with parallel sets for columns 1 and 2. Furthermore, the
existence of several Afrikaans loans in column 2 for certain English loans in
columns 1 and 3 (hembe 'shirt', Afrikaans hemp [sg], hemde [pi]; botela
'butter', Afrikaans hotter; wortela 'carrot', Afrikaans wortel\ bontshis
'beans', Afrikaans boontjies) makes it unlikely that indentured workers,
fresh out of India, were the sole originators of the pidgin.
A few items of Afrikaans origin do occur as loans in South African
Indian languages, but, significantly, they all occur in F. The similarity of
these forms in both F and Bhojpuri, and the lack of contact between Afri-
kaans and Indian languages in Natal makes it likely that these are F words
which have passed into Bhojpuri: basop 'look after, look out' (Afrikaans
pas op), jas 'overcoat, thick coat' (Afrikaans jas), duk 'scarf (Afrikaans
doek). To summarize: all words of Afrikaans origin in Bhojpuri occur in F;
many words of Afrikaans origin occur in F but not in Bhojpuri. The direc-
tion of influence is therefore: Afrikaans —> Fanagalo —> Bhojpuri.
3.2.2. Indie and Dravidian words in South African Indian English
A final caution against Cole's (1953) suggestion that the lack of
economic value of Indian languages militated against the use of lexical
items from them in F stems from a comparison of SAIE and SAE today.
Just as SAIE syntax has been fleshed out in the basilect with recourse to
some Indie and Dravidian structures, so too is the lexicon heavily reliant on
substrate languages for cultural and culinary terminology, and for certain
turns of phrase. A lexicon of South African Indian English (Mesthrie, in
press) contains over a thousand items of lexical material characterizing
SAIE as distinct from other varieties of SAE. About half the items are
terms carried over from the vernaculars, this in an age where the "economic
value" of Indian languages is as low as ever. Perhaps too much stress should
not be placed on this argument, as the preponderance of items from Indian
sources in SAIE as against their extreme paucity in F might well be
explained by the differing purposes to which these languages are applied.
Whereas F is primarily a tool for out-group communication, often in a mas-
ter-servant paradigm, SAIE has become an "Indian" dialect of Natal,
expressive of the cultural milieu of its speakers. Nevertheless, given a
thousand instances of lexical influence in SAIE, one might expect a little
more than three in F, if the latter is indeed an Indian creation.
224 RAJEND MESTHRIE

4. The Archival Evidence

Evidence for pidginization taking place in Natal prior to the advent of

Indian indentured laborers comes from two sources. The first involves the
books of G. H. Mason (later Rev. Mason), Life with the Zulus of Natal,
South Africa (1855), and Zululand — a mission tour of South Africa (1862).
The second source is an unpublished manuscript in the Killie Campbell Col-
lections of the University of Natal — a sixty-six page typescript by an early
English settler, William Lister, entitled Recollections of a Natal colonist,
which he characterizes as "a plain unvarnished tale" of his life in Natal from
1851 to 1905. Lister was born in England in 1828, and arrived in Natal
under the Byrne Immigration Scheme. Fortunately, his narrative is
chronologically explicit, with clear headings based on ten-year intervals.
Although the text is undated, references within it make it clear that it was
started on or before 1904, and completed in 1905. Two sections of his narra-
tive under the heading "1850 to 1860," which I quote almost fully, give a
clear indication of F in its jargon stage. The first alludes to the language of
trade between English settlers of Natal and Afrikaners from the Transvaal
and Orange Free State:
The settlers soon [after 18501 discovered they must do something for
export for the simple reason that there was no market for home grown
produce. The up country farmers turned their attention to producing beef,
butter, bacon, pork and hams; mutton was seldom to be had, sheep farming
being in its infancy. The cattle was such as the country produced, i.e.
Zulus, and many of the settlers took to Zulu trading [...} The traders did
not go into Zululand in the summer on account of the prevailing fever, so
that no trips between March and November was considered a fairly good
years work. If the trader had not a farm or some other occupation, Zulu
trading, to give it its true designation was a lazy life. Twelve miles a day
was about the average trek and when the native kraals were thick and
trade was brisk, of course the oxen had a good long rest. In course of time
some of the settlers in Natal took to trading amongst the Boers over the
Berg, this being the name for the Transvaal, and Orange Free State in
those days, and the term thus of trading and traffiking was called "Smous-
ing." The Boer farmers and their families, like the kaffirs did not place
much value upon time, all the better for the trek oxen, inasmuch as long
outspans suited them down to the ground. I believe the first item in the
trading programme was to ask permission to outspan; then the inevitable
coffee drinking, the male adults among the Boers not being averse to a
Soupje from the smousers private bottle. Then, by means of low Dutch or
the Taal with a little mixture of English, Scotch and the Zulu languages the
 THE ORIGINS OF FANAGALO 225

vrou and kinders learnt the Englishman's history, his pedigree, family and
private and public life in general. By this time probably the sun was set-
ting, a substantial supper was provided for everybody, and if knives and
forks were scarce, of course the clasp knife or hunting knife, which all the
males carried was a good substitute. The Boer farmer, his wife, children,
his sisters, cousins and his aunts retired to rest, how many to lie down in
one room we need not enquire. The trader to his cartel bed in his wagon,
his native servants under the wagon, screening themselves in a bucksail
stretched from the buckrail to the ground, and all slept the sleep of the
just. [Lister, c. 1905:10; punctuation, spelling, and wording of the original
is retained, in this quotation and those following.]

We cannot be certain what the proportion of the "little mixture of

English, Scotch and the Zulu language" was, nor can we take Lister's belief
that the communication is basically "low Dutch" as indisputable. In a situa-
tion in which a pidgin develops, it happens quite frequently that each side
believes that it is using the language of the other party. This phenomenon,
which Silverstein (1972), cited in Romaine (1988:120), calls a "double illu-
sion" that makes communication possible, is also evident in the second
extract below, which deals with the language used between master and ser-
vant in Natal in the 1840s and 1850s.
Of course it is not to be expected that the author should confine him-
self simply to occurrences and topics connected with the decade under
which he writes. The acquisition of the Zulu language amongst the early
settlers was almost imperative. However as a rule "kitchen kaffir" became
pretty general, just as in China, pigin English was used as a means of com-
municating idea between different races.
The colonists certainly did not understand the idiom of the kaffir lan-
guage, but the natives soon accustomed themselves to our English forms of
speech. Thus moshle, stood for good, everywhere but in Zulu the sound of
the adjective agreed with the noun, and the noun preceded the adjective.
The white man would be more correct "upi hamba," where are you going?
"Ambapi na" Many young colonists soon acquired the language correctly.
My friend, who landed early in 1850 aged twelve, became eventually
Superintendent of Native Schools. He could speak the different dialects
among the Bantu races. On one occasion he entered the store room on his
father's sugar estate near the mill, and heard his father yelling to a kaffir
who was pouring out mealies from a sack on the floor: — "Tugalula,
tugalula, you black idiot." "Hello, whats the matter?" "Matter enough,
I'm telling this fellow to pick up the mealies, and he's pouring them out."
"Oh well, suppose you had said "pugamisa". The boy was doing just what
he understood by the word tugalula. "Dear me, I meant to say pugamisa.
My friend Mr. H. wished his kaffir to fetch something quickly and said
"baleka" He had said to the boy "run away" the word to run, was kijima