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<jats:p>There is a disturbing trend emerging in South African history. Unquestioning acceptance of African oral tradition threatens to become a requirement of politically correct scholarship. The African voice knows all. Julian Cobbing has been sharply criticized for ignoring oral evidence in his revision of early nineteenth-century South African history. Cobbing claims that African migration and state formation in the 1820s was caused by the illegal activities of colonial slave raiders who covered up their operations by claiming that the Zulu kingdom under Shaka had laid waste to the interior of southern Africa. This cover story was incorporated into South African history as the <jats:italic>mfecane</jats:italic> (or crushing) and served to justify white supremacy by portraying blacks as inherently violent. Carolyn Hamilton attacks Cobbing for ignoring the African voice which allegedly supports the orthodox <jats:italic>mfecane</jats:italic> by placing Shaka at the center of events. In response, Cobbing claims that the largest record of Zulu oral evidence was distorted by James Stuart, the colonial official who collected it at the turn of the last century. Although Elizabeth Eldredge rejects the Zulucentric <jats:italic>mfecane</jats:italic> in favor of a broad compromise theory based on environmental and trade factors plus the activities of a few Griqua labor-raiders on the High veld, she accused Cobbing of developing a Eurocentric hypothesis which robs Africans of initiative within their own history. More critically, Jeffrey Peires, whose work on the Xhosa is deeply rooted in the conventional <jats:italic>mfecane</jats:italic>, describes Cobbing as “a reactionary wolf dressed up in the clothing of a progressive sheep” and implies that his ideas are nothing short of racist.</jats:p>