by Peires, Jeff
18 For example BK 431 J Maclean-G Mackinnon 10, 14, 17 Jan. 1851. Maclean (1858), p.126; Merriman (1957), p.100; Brownlee (1916), pp.185-6.
19 For the history of Gcaleka and Rharhabe, and for the relationship between the King and the other Xhosa chiefs, see Peires (1981), pp.26-31, 46-7.
4. THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING
The arrival of Grey’s magistrates passed off without undue difficulty. Sandile and the other Ngqika Xhosa were accustomed to Commissioner Brownlee, who eased the transition to the new system by giving Sandile the councillors’ salaries to distribute as he pleased. Anta, pleased to have his autonomy recognised, humoured Magistrate Robertson’s attempts to make him wear the Highland kilt.1 Kama, Siwani, Toyise and the other pro-government chiefs settled down without difficulty. Maqoma and Bhotomane protested vigorously but too late. Maqoma claimed that he had only accepted a magistrate on condition he got his old land back, and Bhotomane was suspicious of the bribe offered in the form of colonial money. ‘I have known you for many years,’ the old chief said to one colonial official. ‘Tell me truly, is there nothing will come after we have taken the money?’ Mhala was similarly recalcitrant, insisting again and again on his right to choose his own magistrate. Magistrate Gawler was forced to wait nearly two months at a nearby mission station until Mhala, isolated by the capitulation of the other chiefs, finally agreed to receive him.2
But it was probably the reaction of Chief Phatho, of all the chiefs, that was most significant. Phatho and his people did not want a magistrate, but they were too distracted by another and seemingly more potent threat even to notice the arrival of Magistrate Vigne. ‘I tried to introduce Mr Vigne to them,’ reported one official, ‘but all they could talk about was lungsickness.’3
This dreaded cattle disease, which already had killed off hundreds of thousands of cattle in Europe, was brought to South Africa in September 1853 by a Dutch ship carrying Friesland bulls to Mossel Bay, a small port between Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. Starting off as little more than a dry, husky cough, lungsickness slowly tightened its grip on the hapless beasts it destroyed, bringing to them a lingering and uniquely horrible death. The cough gradually increased in severity, forcing the animals to stretch forward with their front legs wide apart, their heads extended and their tongues protruding, gasping for air. Yellowish fluid crept over their lungs which stuck to their ribs, and as the disease spread, the cattle putrefied from the inside out, becoming first constipated and then diarrheoatic. In their final agony, the beasts were unable to move or lie down at all. Their nostrils dilated for lack of air, their muzzles frothed with saliva until, unable to eat, they wasted away and died mere skeletons.4
The Cape government hurriedly issued regulations to check the spread of the disease, but there was no stopping it. Farmers who were only too eager to shoot other people’s lungsick cattle did their best to hide the fact when lungsickness appeared in their own herds. No one could tell whether it was endemic or infectious, or whether innoculation halted it or helped it spread. Bleeding, the normal treatment for lung ailments, only made it worse.5 It was difficult to diagnose the disease with any certainty until a beast was so far gone that the rest of the herd were likewise infected. Worst of all, the virtually invisible lungsickness bacteria could lodge for very long periods in the lungs of a beast without manifesting themselves. Secretly infected cattle thus mingled freely with uninfected animals and, in some cases, laid whole herds low some 18 months after the owners believed that the danger was past. It was thus impossible to control the disease, or even to know where or when it would strike next.
Lungsickness spread like an evil fire as infected oxen transported it along the waggon roads of the Cape Colony. By March 1854 it had reached Uitenhage, whence a Mfengu travelling with five cattle brought it to Fort Beaufort on the borders of Xhosaland. From Fort Beaufort it passed through Chief Kama’s territory on its way to King William’s Town, the capital of British Kaffraria (March 1855). From King William’s Town it spread through the coastal territories of Chiefs Phatho and Mhala, and along the waggon road to Natal, passing Maqoma’s and reaching Butterworth in King Sarhili’s country in January 1856. Last to be affected were the Ngqika Xhosa under Chiefs Sandile, Xhoxho and Feni, protected by their distant location north of King William’s Town. High up in the Windvogelberg in the extreme north, Chief Anta was lucky enough to escape the disease altogether (see Map 4 on p.188).6
The Xhosa could see the disease coming and took all the precautions they could to escape from it. They drove their precious cattle to mountainous and secluded places. They quarantined all strange and colonial cattle within their borders and prohibited the introduction of others. They fenced kilometre after kilometre of pasturage, and burnt the grass all around the perimeter until the night sky was illuminated by the reflection of the flames. Infected carcasses were buried deep in the ground, and most Xhosa refused to eat the meat. King Sarhili and the other chiefs executed men caught infringing these regulations, but there were always some individuals who hoped that their lungsick cattle might yet recover and thus contributed to the further spread of the disease.7
Xhosa losses from lungsickness ran at about 5 000 cattle a month, and in some areas approximately two out of every three cattle died. Some homesteads escaped relatively lightly, but others lost absolutely everything they had. Reliable figures from Phatho’s chiefdom give us some indication of the catastrophe. The chief himself lost 2 400 out of 2 500 cattle, his Great Son Dilima lost 60 out of 70, his brother Kobe 130 out of 150, and his brother-in-law Stokwe all of 110. A passing official described the scene in Phatho’s country, later a stronghold of the Cattle-Killing movement.
The utmost destitution prevails throughout the country we traversed; they have lost nearly all their cattle … Those who have a few cattle are slaughtering them rather than run the risk of losing them by lungsickness.8
To make matters even worse, the maize was blighted by a species of grub which penetrated the roots and destroyed the stalks before the corn was edible. Excessive rains rotted many of the surviving fields, and even the birds were more destructive than usual that season.9 Truly, it seemed as if nature herself was in league with the enemies of the Xhosa.
Nothing like this had ever happened before. The Xhosa subsided into a mood which one observer described as ‘depression and a sense of great loss’. Their thoughts turned naturally towards the possibility that the disease might have been caused by malevolent witchcraft. Sarhili put more than 20 witches to death across the Kei river but even these harsh measures failed to halt the epidemic.10
Despair often lapses into apathy and inactivity, but a little hope can ignite it with an explosive force. That hope was supplied to the Xhosa people early in November 1854 when the luck of ‘Old Boots’ Cathcart, the somewhat fortunate victor of the War of Mlanjeni, finally ran out. Having charged out in the wrong direction during one of the battles in the Crimean War, Cathcart suddenly found himself virtually alone and utterly surrounded by the Russian army. ‘I fear,’ he said with fine understatement, ‘we are in a mess.’ A moment later he was dead.11
The death in battle of their former Governor spread among the Xhosa with a speed that few Europeans could credit. The Xhosa had never heard of Russia; much less did they understand the obscure causes of the Crimean War. All they knew was that these mysterious ‘Russians’ had killed Sir George Cathcart and put the British army on the defensive. Who were these Russians? What weapons did they fight with? What colour were they? The colonial answer that the Russians were white like themselves and that the British were winning was received with polite scepticism.12 Two runaway settlers who fled to independent Xhosaland to escape their creditors were rumoured to be deserters from the defeated British army. The Russians, it gradually came to be believed, were not a white nation at all but a black one, the spirits of Xhosa warriors who had died fighting in the various wars against the Colony. For months after the news of Ca
thcart’s death, the Xhosa posted lookouts on the higher hills to watch for the arrival of the Russian ships.13
In Sarhili’s country across the Kei, Mjuza, the son of the prophet Nxele, announced that his father had not drowned escaping from Robben Island but was leading the conquering black army across the sea. Mlanjeni, too, was believed to have risen from the dead.
[Sarhili’s people] firmly believe that … the sickness among the cattle was predicted by the prophet [Mlanjeni], and that he can bring all their cattle to life again, that there has been a general resurrection of the [Xhosa] killed in the last war, and that the nation we are now fighting with are not Russians but [Xhosa].14
By the summer of 1855, more than five prophets had sprung up within British Kaffraria itself, asserting that they were in contact with the black nation across the sea, who were on their way to help the Xhosa. In the meantime, the people should refrain from cultivating and should kill cattle. The most renowned of these early prophets was the wife of Councillor Bhulu in Kama’s chiefdom.
[The wife of Bhulu] predicts that at the Tabendoda [mountain] will be provided an inexhaustible supply of skins of wild animals prepared for wearing as well as ornaments of every description … [She] exhorts the [Xhosa] to lay aside their witchcraft in order that the good time may come, and she has dug a trench round her hut into which will fall those who are guilty of witchcraft.15
Another prophetess, the daughter-in-law of Petsheni, ordered the Xhosa to kill cattle, as more would be provided, and to buy new axes to build new cattle enclosures which would be filled with cattle at the appointed time. All the early prophets were vigorously anti-white, saying, ‘Do not align yourselves with the whites because they crucified His son, and you will be punished if you join them.’
Chief Phatho, who had lost 96 per cent of his cattle by lungsickness, heeded these prophets and declined to cultivate in the spring of 1855, and so did many of the people of the worst affected districts.16 By March 1856, however, the excitement seemed to be subsiding. The wife of Bhulu was unwise enough to set a date for the great day, and her influence declined when it passed without event. The Russians made peace with Britain, and the Crimean War came to an end.
But all the elements of the great Cattle-Killing movement were already in place. Everywhere in Xhosaland, the homestead heads gazed at their favourite cattle, wondering whether to slaughter them before the plague of lungsickness rendered them utterly useless. At the Great Places of the chiefs, Sir George Grey’s magistrates took up their positions, visible symbols of colonial domination and concrete warnings of further oppression to come. The minds of the people were filled with ideas of a mysterious black race across the sea, newly resurrected from the dead.
And then, one day in April 1856, down by the Gxarha River in the country of King Sarhili, a young girl went out to the cultivated fields to scare the birds away from the standing corn. Her name was Nongqawuse. Her parents were dead. She lived with her uncle Mhlakaza, once known as Wilhelm Goliath, the former servant of Archdeacon Merriman.
1 For a marvellous description of Brownlee’s first pay-out to Sandile, see Wilmot (1856), pp.61-2, 75. For Anta, Gh 8/49 J Maclean-G Grey, 24 Nov. 1856.
2 BK 82 J Ayliff, Minutes of an Interview, 22 April 1856; BK 140 Maqoma and Botman-G Grey, 27 April 1856; GH 8/27 J Maclean-W Liddle, 23 Nov. 1855; Uncatalogued MS, Cory Library, Diary of Clerk to Colonel Maclean, Fort Murray, 13, 19 Jan. 1856; MS 2984, Cory Library, J Ross-R Ross, 2 Feb. 1856.
3 GH 8/28 J Ayliff-J Maclean, 26 May 1856.
4 I would like to thank Dr Stuart Rivell for helpful discussions on lungsickness. For an early account with some historical background, see D Hutcheon (1905).
5 The spread of lungsickness among the herds of white farmers is extensively chronicled in the colonial newspapers. See, for example, Grahamstown Journal, 18 March, 29 July, 5 Aug. 1854.
6 On the spread of lungsickness: GH 28/70 J Jackson-G Grey, 5 Feb. 1856; GH 8/28 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 6 Feb. 1856; E Robertson-J Maclean, 30 July 1856; Acc 793 J Gawler-F Reeve, 7 July 1856; Grahamstown Journal, 24 March 1855; MS 7639, Cory Library, B Ross-J Ross, 8 May 1854; Merriman (1957), p.215.
7 On Xhosa precautions, see Grahamstown Journal, 10 Feb., 24, 26 March, 4 Aug., 8 Sept., 17 Nov. 1855; Gqoba (1888), Part II; Anglo-African, 1 March 1855.
8 Grahamstown Journal, 26 March 1855; Imperial Blue Book 2096 of 1856, W Shaw-J Jackson, 16 May 1855, p.9; GH 23/26 G Grey-H Labouchere, 20 Sept. 1856; Imperial Blue Book 2352 of 1857, G Grey-H Labouchere, 3 Oct. 1856; GH 8/28 J Ayliff-J Maclean, 26 May 1856.
9 Cape Monitor, 9 Feb. 1856; GH 8/29 J Maclean-G Grey, 17 July 1856; BK 81 J Gawler-J Maclean, 13 May 1856.
10 Merriman (1957), p.216.
11 Hibbert (1961), pp.177-8.
12 Merriman (1957), p.215.
13 CH 8/31 Schedule 417, Information communicated to Lieut-Gen. Jackson, 4 April 1856; BK 70 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 14 Feb. 1856; Scully (1913), p.310.
14 GH 8/27 J Maclean-J Jackson 16 Oct. 1855, enclosing C Canham-B Nicolson, 30 Sept. 1855.
15 CH 20/2/1 Information received from a shrewd and trustworthy native, 14 Oct. 1855; BK 70 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 11 May 1856.
16 BK 70 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 11 May 1856; BK 86 F Reeve-J Maclean, 4 June 1856; GH 8/28 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 5 April 1856; Berlin Mission Archives, Kropf and Liefeldt, Report for the first half-year, 1856.
CHAPTER 3 – Nongqawuse
CHAPTER 3
Nongqawuse
1. DOWN BY THE GXARHA
It is impossible to walk along the banks of the Gxarha as it threads its way through the rugged and broken country along the Indian Ocean coast just east of the Great Kei River. A small stream, no more than 20 kilometres in length, the Gxarha sometimes drops down waterfalls and sometimes deepens into pools but mostly runs through a narrow cutting between high precipitous cliffs. So abrupt are the Gxarha’s twists and plunges that from some vantage points a slight turn of the head is enough to change a panoramic view of the river beneath one’s feet into a sheer rock face or an impenetrably wooded thicket. Near its mouth, the Gxarha widens and the steep cliffs flatten out into receding green hills, stretching the visitor’s field of vision far beyond the distance which his voice might carry or his ears might hear, and allowing his eyes to see objects which he could not reach on foot in an hour or more of hard travelling. Tall reeds and leafy clumps of strelitzia line the edges of the river, casting giant shadows which mingle at dusk with the small islands that dot the stream to form curious shapes in the shallow water. Southwesterly winds often blow the mist off the sea into Gxarha mouth, and, although a sandbar now blocks the estuary, it is possible that in the nineteenth century the schools of dolphin then common on the coast swam into the river mouth. The Gxarha mouth’s blend of sea, bush, cliffs and river was by no means unique in Xhosaland, but it was striking nevertheless and it included most of the natural elements which usually inspired the Xhosa with awe and foreboding.1
On a certain day in April 1856, two young girls left Mhlakaza’s homestead on the Gxarha to frighten the birds away from the cultivated fields. The elder was Nongqawuse, an orphan girl of about 15 living with her uncle Mhlakaza. The younger was Nombanda, Mhlakaza’s sister-in-law, then aged about eight or ten. As they stood in the fields guarding the crops, Nongqawuse heard her name called by two strangers standing in a small bush adjoining the garden. After giving her their names, they entrusted her with the following singular message:
Tell that the whole community will rise from the dead; and that all cattle now living must be slaughtered, for they have been reared by contaminated hands because there are people about who deal in witchcraft.
There should be no cultivation, but great new grain pits must be dug, new houses must be built, and great strong cattle enc
losures must be erected. Cut out new milksacks and weave many doors from buka roots. So says the chief Napakade, the descendant of Sifuba-sibanzi. The people must leave their witchcraft, for soon they will be examined by diviners.2
Nongqawuse and Nombanda returned home and related what had happened but no one would believe them. The next day they went again to scare the birds and again the strangers appeared to them. The strangers asked whether their message had been delivered and how it had been received. ‘They only treated it like a joke,’ replied the girls. ‘Nobody listened. They said we were telling fairy-tales.’ The strangers were not to be put off. They ordered Nongqawuse to go to her uncle Mhlakaza.
Say to him we wish to see him, but that he must first kill a beast, wash his body clean and, having thus prepared himself to appear before us, come to us in four days time.3
Nongqawuse told her uncle that one of the strangers had enquired most anxiously about him, and from her description Mhlakaza realised that this stranger was none other than his young brother, Nongqawuse’s late father. He purified himself according to the instructions of the strangers and four days later went off to the fields with a party of companions. The strangers did not reveal themselves to him in person but spoke to him in voices that only Nongqawuse could hear.
They told him that they were the people often spoken of in former days by [Nxele] and Umlanjeni, as being a strong people, who would in the course of time render the [Xhosa] the assistance they required in driving the white men out of the land, that they had been sent by their great chief Sifubasibanzi, who is likewise the Great Chief of all the [Xhosa] to their help, and in order that this may be carried into effect, they must prove themselves deserving by acting up to their commands, which are, first, to throw away all bewitching matter – second, to kill all their cattle, so as to be stocked with others that are free from any disease.4