by Peires, Jeff
The colonial authorities were by now most thoroughly alarmed.8 Although Mlanjeni had committed no crime, they decided to seize him and remove him from British Kaffraria. But they realised it would not be easy. Mlanjeni changed his residence from day to day, he slept in the bushes by night, and he had his spies constantly on the watch for the police. Lieutenant-Governor Mackinnon was uncomfortably aware that the Xhosa had noted his inability to capture the Riverman, and he was unwilling to risk an open failure. Only Governor Smith remained supremely unconcerned. ‘This drought is much against us, and may enable this regenerated Mahomet to play upon the credulity of your Orientals,’ he facetiously informed Mackinnon. He was very sure that Mlanjeni would soon find himself in the lunatic colony on Robben Island.9
Meanwhile, white settler alarm had reached such a pitch that Smith felt obliged to visit the eastern Cape to restore calm through the sunshine of his personality. Arriving on the frontier late in October 1850, he called one of his Great Meetings and reminded the chiefs how happy they were under his rule, threatening them with the most dire fate in case of war. He required them all to kiss the ‘staff of peace’, though he seems to have spared them his boots on this occasion. The effect of the whole was however greatly marred by the absence of the one chief whose presence most mattered. Sandile sent the excuse that he had fallen from his horse, but the fact of the matter was that he had fallen into a state ‘of the most abject fear’. Smith sent Commissioner Brownlee, Sandile’s magistrate, to talk to Sandile but the chief replied, ‘No, I cannot come in. I dare not,’ recalling the promises which had lured him into captivity during the War of the Axe. ‘Sandile says that while he greatly dreads offending His Excellency, he fully believes he is to be apprehended; and with the dread of his former confinement before his eyes, he fears placing himself in a position again to lose his liberty or his life.’10
Though perfectly well aware that Sandile was genuinely frightened, Smith chose to interpret the chief’s terror as an act of defiance. He had been considering the deposition of Sandile even before the chief failed to attend his Great Meeting, and it is probable that the governor welcomed this excuse for stern action.11 His officials thought that the other Xhosa chiefs could be bought off with government salaries, and Smith himself believed that the Xhosa commoners, liberated and enriched by the end of chiefly domination, would rally to the colonial side. ‘Every [Xhosa] who possesses anything is a supporter of the present Government,’ he wrote. No sooner had Commissioner Brownlee reported that Sandile still declined to come in than Smith officially deposed the chief and appointed Brownlee himself in Sandile’s place. By replacing the senior chief in British Kaffraria with a 29-year-old white official, Smith had extended drastically the scope of the Mlanjeni question and forced the Xhosa to choose between the colonial government and their own hereditary ruler. He had thrown down a gauntlet, but he did not expect the Xhosa to pick it up. He could not have been more mistaken.
Later that November the chiefs of the Ngqika section of the Xhosa – several of them bitter personal rivals of Sandile – met in secret and declared ‘that as long as the Gaikas remained a nation they would always look to Sandilli as the great chief’. Next day, Sandile and 60 mounted men rode down to the Keiskamma River to seek an interview with the prophet Mlanjeni. When they returned, the chief ordered every man who wished to join his cause to slaughter one head of cattle.12
Although our information on the subject is very inadequate, it seems as if the Riverman ordered two distinct varieties of cattle-killing. The first order was that all dun and yellow-coloured cattle should be slain or disposed of. The settlers feared that this was because dun was the colour of the English, and that dun-coloured cattle were held to be accursed like the English. The most reliable Xhosa-language version of Mlanjeni’s command – ‘Remove (-deda) all dun and yellow cattle, for as long as they exist … the nation will die’ – likewise seems to imply that cattle of these colours were unnatural beasts which polluted the earth.13 In addition to disposing of the abominated beasts, people were instructed to sacrifice cattle to Mlanjeni himself.
Men who had only two or three head, would kill one of two milk cows …; to save themselves from the sight of a motherless little calf … the owner would kill the young creature first. Thousands more were immolated. Boys, and such as were so impoverished as to have no cattle at all, offered goats.14
As the sacrificer wrenched out the aorta and the dying beast bellowed forth one last great cry, the people shouted with joy, ‘The victim is presented to thee, Umlanjeni; Hear; and remember us.’
Even more portentous than these sacrifices were the preparations Mlanjeni made to doctor the Xhosa for war. The Xhosa army was a citizen army. There were no regiments, no military institutions of any kind; there was no discipline. Every adult male was expected to fight under the general command of his chief and the brave men of his locality. The only preparation and central direction was that given by the wardoctor. In normal times, every chiefdom had its own wardoctor, but every now again a man arose of such exceptional talents that he directed the affairs of the whole nation, and was consulted by all the nations round about. Nxele, the prophet of 1818-9, had been such a man, and Mlanjeni was recognised as another.
By identifying witches and rooting out witchcraft, Mlanjeni had already gone some way towards ‘washing’ and purifying the nation, a necessary prerequisite for success in war. Now he set out to render the fighting men invulnerable. He administered medicines composed largely of the roots of the plumbago, a well-known remedy for bone fractures.15 More original and most striking to his followers was his prescription of the fleshy purple roots of the pelargonium pulverulentum, known even today as the ‘roots of Mlanjeni’. This pelargonium was closely related to another, commonly used to heal wounds, but it had not been recognised previously as possessing any special properties. Now, however, Mlanjeni gave out short sticks of this root for the Xhosa to wear around their necks or carry in their bags. They were to rub their bodies with juice from the root, and, on attacking the enemy, they were to chew on the stick, spit its fibres out all around them, and call on their ancestors and on the prophet, ‘O! Mlanjeni! You son of Kala, help us, we are looking to [you] to come and bless us.’ The guns of the British would shoot hot water, their bullets would do no harm, and their gunpowder would fail to ignite. ‘Those persons who observe witchcraft will die,’ warned Mlanjeni, ‘but those who trust in me and observe my directions will live.’
The eruption of slaughtering, not only among Sandile’s Ngqika Xhosa but also among the Ndlambe Xhosa near the coast and King Sarhili’s Gcaleka Xhosa across the Kei River, together with some daring rescues of Xhosa cattle seized for trespass, frightened the colonial farmers settled on the lands Smith had recently seized from the Xhosa. Ignoring the assurances of the government that all was well, they abandoned their farms in droves. Commissioner Maclean fed his superiors a stream of alarming and accurate information until even Smith’s complacency was disturbed. Less than a fortnight after his triumphal return to Cape Town, the Governor was boarding yet another ship to take him back to British Kaffraria. On 19 December, he met the Ngqika Xhosa at Fort Cox on the slopes of the Amathole Mountains, clearly intending to be conciliatory. He promised that he would send no redcoats to hunt Sandile and he appointed Sandile’s mother as Xhosa regent in place of Commissioner Brownlee. But when the Xhosa asked him why he had brought so many troops with him if his intentions were peaceful, he lost his temper. Among other lamentable things, he called Maqoma a ‘drunken beast’ and declared that he didn’t care whether that chief touched the ‘stick of peace’ or not.16
Satisfied as always with his own performance, Smith mocked the settler farmers for running away and informed a friend that ‘the [Xhosa] chiefs are most submissive and obedient just now and I will try and keep them so’. The next day he sent Colonel Mackinnon and 650 men into the Amathole Mountains to make a show of British strength. It was ambushed and ro
uted in the Boomah Pass, with the loss of 12 men killed and 3 000 rounds of ammunition captured. On their way home, Mackinnon’s expedition found the dead and mutilated bodies of 16 members of the 45th Regiment, surprised on the plains of Debe Nek. On Christmas Day 1850 the Xhosa wreaked a terrible revenge on the military villagers of the Tyhume Valley, who had desecrated the grave of their late chief Tyhali. Forty white men were killed fighting to the last bullet, although none of the women or children were injured. An overwhelming force of Xhosa blockaded Sir Harry Smith inside Fort Cox and beat back Major-General Somerset’s feeble attempts to relieve him. Meanwhile the ‘Kaffir Police’, a paramilitary body of trained collaborators, rebelled against their white officers, and the Khoi settlers of the Kat River Valley discarded their traditional alliance with the Colony to join the Xhosa in an all-out war against white domination in South Africa. The half-Xhosa, half-Khoi squatter chief, Hermanus Matroos, rang in the New Year with a pitched battle against colonial forces in the streets of Fort Beaufort. The War of Mlanjeni had begun.
1 For the War of the Axe, see Peires (1981), pp.119-34, 150-155. For the capture of Sandile, see Brownlee (1916), pp.293-4 and Le Cordeur and Saunders (1981), Chapter VII, esp. pp.226, 232; GH 8/25 C Brownlee-G Mackinnon, 2 Sept. 1854; GH 8/25 J Maclean-W Liddle, 4 Sept. 1854.
2 AL Harington (1980) goes a long way towards dissipating the popular image of Smith. But see, for example, J Lehmann (1977). For Smith’s earlier spell in South Africa and an account of the death of Hintsa, see also Peires (1981), pp. 109-115.
3 For Smith’s treatment of Maqoma and Sandile, and for his first Great Meeting, see Harington (1980), pp.98-109; Cory (1965), V, p.100; SA Commercial Advertiser, 22, 29 Dec. 1847, 8, 15 Jan. 1848; EP Herald, 25 Dec. 1847; H Ward (1851), pp.316-8; SEK Mqhayi (n.d.), p.257; Adams (1941), p.257.
4 For Smith’s policy in British Kaffraria before the outbreak of war, see Peires (1981), pp.165-8.
5 For Mackinnon’s fulsome annual reports, see Imperial Blue Books 969 of 1848, 1056 of 1849, and 1288 of 1850. For his cowardice, consider his abandonment of the Queen’s Regiment in the Fish River bush. Journal of A Holdich, Staffordshire Regimental Museum, Whittington, 12 Sept. 1851. See also C Seymour-F Seymour, 17 March 1853, Seymour of Ragley Papers, Warwickshire County Record Office, Warwick.
6 Imperial Blue Book, 1334 of 1851, G Cyrus-Civil Commissioner of Albany, 15 Aug. 1850, pp.42-3. A slightly different version of this speech is given in Peires (1981), p.166.
7 The colonial authorities intervened to arrest a witch-finder who had administered a witchcraft accusation at the behest of Maqoma. See Imperial Blue Book 1288 of 1850, H Smith-Earl Grey, 23 Aug. 1849, p.18.
8 The best source on early colonial reactions to Mlanjeni’s prophecies is Imperial Blue Book 1334 of 1851. See especially J Maclean-G Mackinnon, 26 Aug. 1850, pp.17-8.
9 H Smith-G Mackinnon, 7 Oct. 1850 in ibid, p.15.
10 H Smith-Earl Grey, 31 Oct. 1850 and enclosures in ibid, pp.38-41.
11 Mackinnon had urged Smith to depose Sandile as early as 14 October 1850. G Mackinnon-H Smith 14 Oct. 1850, in ibid, p.93.
12 J Maclean-G Mackinnon, 26, 28 Nov. 1850 in ibid, pp. 102, 105; GH 8/23 J Maclean-G Mackinnon, 2 Dec. 1850.
13 ‘Sacrificial cattle’, (see Note 5 above) includes a letter from JH Soga giving this statement. Kropf and Godfrey (1915), p.36, record, however, that Mlanjeni commanded the people to -bingelela (sacrifice) dun cattle. Bryce Ross’s detailed contemporary account in the Home and Foreign Record of the Free Church of Scotland, 11 (1851-2), p.268, supports Soga’s version, and makes it clear that there were to be two distinct forms of cattle-killing. Dun and yellow coloured cattle were to be disposed of because they were an abomination; other cattle were to be sacrificed as a precious gift. A similar ambiguity surrounded Nongqawuse’s initial orders (see below, Chapter 4(1)) and it is most probable that Mlanjeni’s instructions meant different things to different people.
14 Bryce Ross, cited in Note 21.
15 For wardoctoring in Xhosa society, see JH Soga (n.d.), p.66. For the plants used by Mlanjeni, see A Smith of St Cyrus (1895), pp.148-9,170 and Kropf and Godfrey (1915), pp. 410, 496. For more details on the actual charm and its use, MS 158d, Grey Collection, SA Library, Cape Town. Paper by Wm Kekale Kaye on the ‘Koobulu of Umlanjeni’. Among many reports, mostly suspect, regarding Mlanjeni’s claims that the bullets would turn to water, see Cory Interview 109. Tanco, interviewed at Kentani, 24 Jan. 1910, Cory Library, Grahamstown.
16 The best account of this crucial meeting is in Imperial Blue Book 635 of 1851, Evidence of H Renton, pp.384-7.
3. THE WAR OF MLANJENI (1850-3)
Mlanjeni’s promises did not come true.1 The guns of the Imperial troops did not shoot hot water, nor did the Xhosa warriors prove invulnerable to shot and shell. The squatter chief Hermanus perished in his third attempt to take Fort Beaufort, and Xhosa attacks on Fort White, Fort Hare and the town of Whittlesea failed all the sooner because the Xhosa perceived that their much vaunted protection against firearms was of no use. The battlefields were strewn with Mlanjeni’s charm-sticks dyed with the blood of the true believers. Within a month the Xhosa King, Sarhili, who had not yet personally committed himself to the fighting, offered Governor Smith an honourable peace:
We beg for peace over the whole land. Our great word is to our Father [Smith] put down the War. We intercede for the Gaikas [Sandile’s followers]. Have mercy on them, and talk. Government must put down the War. We beg for them … Stop the War…. We one and all say Stop the War. The Gaikas are also Smith’s children.
If the Governor Smith our Father does not like to send to Sandile to tell him to put down his assagais and stop the War then if Smith my Father will send to me, I will send to Sandile to tell him to put down his assagais.
Smith ignored this approach, and rejected a similar overture in March 1851. Humiliated and besieged in Fort Cox, he had issued furious orders to the settlers to ‘rise en masse … to destroy and exterminate these most barbarous and treacherous savages’. ‘Extermination is now the only word and principle to guide us,’ he informed an old comrade of the 1835 War. ‘I should be glad if the Boers would name their own commandant, under him they may go their own way and shoot as they like.’ Nine months later, he was still talking privately of hanging all the chiefs after obtaining their unconditional surrender.2
Caught between the obduracy of Smith and the broken promises of Mlanjeni, the Xhosa knuckled down to fighting the longest, hardest and ugliest war ever fought over one hundred years of bloodshed on the Cape Colony’s eastern frontier. It would be tedious and, indeed, unnecessary to give a full account of a war that consisted of an endless accumulation of minor actions, and the following short summary will have to suffice. Essentially, there were four main theatres of war. (Readers are advised to refer to the map on p.35.)
The Amathole Mountains
During his last, fateful Great Meeting four days before the outbreak of war, Sir Harry Smith had boasted of the shiploads of British soldiers that he could summon to his aid. ‘But,’ asked Maqoma, ‘have you got any ships that will sail into the Amatolas?’ It was an apt question. The Amathole Mountains, part of the great chain which marks the edge of southern Africa’s highveld plateau, was the natural fortress of the Xhosa nation.
Its sides are bold and precipitous; it is split and intersected with ravines; it is broken by masses of rock, and it is clothed with noble forest trees … Masses of craggy rock here and there rise perpendicularly amidst these thickets, and in other parts the sides of the mountain are deeply scored by kloofs, or rocky gullies covered by rank vegetation.3
The overwhelming majority of the Ngqika Xhosa lived on the slopes of the Amathole, and it was there that the Great Place of their chief Sandile was situated. Th
e war began in the Amathole, where the battle of the Boomah Pass and the Christmas Day massacre of the military villages took place. But because Sandile was no general and because he was greatly discouraged by the failure of Mlanjeni’s prophecies, he was not able to exploit to the full the natural advantages which the mountains offered the Xhosa. Given their lack of firearms and inability to use them effectively, Sandile probably would have done better to abandon set-piece engagements at musket range and concentrate on hand-to-hand fighting.4 Nevertheless, the sheer size and complexity of the Amathole range absorbed a great deal of the Imperial fighting power throughout the war, and afforded endless opportunities for bands of Xhosa warriors and their cattle to avoid capture.