by Peires, Jeff
7 BK 70 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 4 Oct. 1856; BK 71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 21 Feb. 1857.
8 For Joyi s speech, CO 2949 J Warner-R Southey, 24 Feb. 1857. I have taken a liberty with historical truth here. Joyi only made this speech after the Cattle-Killing. But his attitude was consistently hostile throughout. For the Thembu, see Imperial Blue Book 2352 of 1857-8, J Warner-WGB Shepstone, 23 Sept. 1856, p.26; BK 89 Secret Information 18 Sept. 1856. There is a great deal of information on the Thembu which I have been unable to treat in detail. See J Warner’s dispatches in CO 2949-CO 2951. For more on Fadana, see Ch. 9/1.
9 BK 89 Information communicated to the Chief Commissioner 13, 26 Oct. 1856.
10 All the details of Moshoeshoe’s dealings with Sarhili were painstakingly assembled by Maclean and enclosed in his lengthy despatch to Grey, 25 March 1856, printed in Imperial Blue Book 2352 of 1857-8, p.72 ff. Reading Maclean’s report, one finds it hard to believe that they were able to draw such far-reaching conclusions from such a small amount of evidence.
11 BK 81 J Gawler-J Maclean, 25 Sept. 1856; MS 3328 Cory Library, J Ross-J Laing, 11 Oct. 1856; King William’s Town Gazette, 16 Oct. 1856.
12 MS 9043 Cory Library, J Laing Diary, 1 Oct. 1856; LMS papers, SOAS, Box 30 FG Kayser-LMS, Oct. 1856; MS 3236 Cory Library, J Ross-A Thomson, 24 Nov. 1856; BK 89 Information communicated by Jan Tshatshu, 15 Oct. 1856; Chalmers (1878), p.355.
13 BK 89 Information communicated by Jan Tshatshu, 13, 15 Oct. 1856.
2. GREY INTERVENES
In his attempts to revive the Cattle-Killing movement, King Sarhili found one ally as effective as he was unexpected: Governor Grey himself. To understand how this came about, it is necessary to go back a little and consider the colonial reaction to the events just described.
The ranking Imperial official in British Kaffraria was of course its Chief Commissioner, Colonel John Maclean. Maclean was a cautious man who had succeeded to high office largely on account of his capacity to avoid the mistakes of others. He had built up an excellent network of spies and informers which he set in motion as soon as the prophecies began to take effect on his side of the Kei. As details of the Cattle-Killing movement began to filter through to his headquarters at Fort Murray, Maclean found himself torn between the hope that nothing untoward would happen and the fear that he might be caught unprepared for any crisis which might occur. Thus he tended at first to discount the importance of the movement, dismissing the reports of cattle-killing as exaggerated rumours of measures taken by the Xhosa as a result of lungsickness.1 Gradually, however, as he became increasingly unable to construct a satisfactory explanation of these strange events from the facts at his disposal, Maclean turned quite naturally to the assumption that the key to understanding the Cattle-Killing lay in information which was being concealed from him. Like his master Grey, Maclean possessed a good measure of the paranoia born of authoritarianism and, once again like Grey, he found conspiracy theory a congenial means of damning his opponents and justifying himself. Ever since Moshoeshoe’s victory over Governor Cathcart at the battle of Berea, Maclean had seen the Sotho King as the potential mastermind of a united black combination against white domination in southern Africa. Now, seizing on some evidence of Moshoeshoe’s interest in Xhosa affairs, Maclean jumped to the remarkable conclusion that Mhlakaza was ‘merely a secondary instrument in the hands of the Great Chiefs [Sarhili and Moshoeshoe] working on the superstition and ignorance of the common people’.2
On the basis of these deductions, Maclean wrote Sarhili a warning letter threatening him with a colonial invasion unless he put an end to the Cattle-Killing. ‘If Kreli cannot stop him [Mhlakaza], I will be very ready to help him.’ The letter was never delivered, but Grey was furious. He wrote Maclean a savage letter of reprimand, reminding the Chief Commissioner that that he, Grey, was the Governor and the person responsible for the peace of the country. Sadly chastened, Maclean apologised and left all future initiatives to Grey.3
The only other official in British Kaffraria with recognised status and experience regarding Xhosa affairs was Charles Brownlee, the Ngqika Commissioner. Brownlee cared for the well-being and prosperity of the Xhosa in a way that Grey and Maclean did not, and he could communicate with the people in their own language. Although the Xhosa always regarded Brownlee as first and foremost a man of uRhulumente, they always felt him to be a ‘man of the Government’ that one could talk to.
When the Cattle-Killing erupted, Brownlee was less concerned with its consequences for his reputation than with staving it off, and above all with keeping Chief Sandile, his immediate responsibility, out of it. Everybody knew that Sandile’s decision, whether to kill or not to kill, was crucial, for it was certain that the great mass of uncommitted Xhosa would follow him. Sandile was often regarded by colonial officials as weak and stupid, and indeed he entirely lacked the bravery of Maqoma, the cunning of Mhala or the regal presence of Sarhili. But Sandile did have one great quality: he took his position as the senior Rharhabe Xhosa chief very seriously and he did his best to act up to the responsibilities of that position. If he was indecisive – and he often seemed so – it was because he was often placed in a situation where it was impossible to decide what was the best thing to do. The Cattle-Killing was just such an occasion.
[Sandile said] that he would call a meeting of his councillors and would adopt their decisions. He was now in the midst of two evils, dread of the wrath of the people who have appeared, and dread of famine. Should he direct the people to cultivate their lands, and they should therefore be destroyed, the blame would be his, and likewise should he direct them not to cultivate and a famine ensue, the blame would be his. He did not wish to take the responsibility in this matter.4
Paradoxically, Sandile’s very indecisiveness inclined his people to follow his word. When he eventually did come to a decision, they felt sure that it must be the right one. Brownlee thus knew that if Sandile killed his cattle all the other Ngqika would follow suit, and he therefore devoted all his energies to making sure that the chief played a public part in putting down the movement.
At first it seemed as if Brownlee’s strategy was working well. Lungsickness had not yet made great inroads into the relatively isolated Ngqika territory, and Sandile was not yet under any great pressure to kill. In accordance with Brownlee’s wishes, he ordered his people to ignore the prophecies and threatened to fine anyone he caught killing cattle. But as enthusiasm for the Cattle-Killing spread among the commoners Sandile became increasingly doubtful.
In the midst of this uncertainty, Brownlee received a message from an unexpected source. King Sarhili himself sent to say that he was very anxious to see him and asked him to come up to the Hohita as soon as possible. Brownlee was enthusiastic.5 ‘I have known him [Sarhili] long and am on friendly terms with him,’ he wrote, ‘I also thought that [Sarhili] had gone so far that he was ashamed to draw back, even though he saw his error, and that he might be glad of the opportunity afforded by our friendly advice of undoing what he had done.’ He proposed to take Sandile with him, hoping thereby to get that chief to commit himself irrevocably against the Cattle-Killing. Sandile jumped at the idea, and wanted to set off as soon as possible but Brownlee had other commitments. It was a fatal delay. Maclean, who resented Brownlee’s influence among the Xhosa, disapproved of the proposed visit and, needless to say, Governor Grey was equally hostile to any good suggestion that he had not thought of himself. As he had reprimanded Maclean for trying to send Sarhili a message, he now reprimanded Brownlee for trying to visit him. ‘Were it not for the zeal with which he [Brownlee] discharges his duties,’ wrote Grey, ‘I should really have felt exceedingly annoyed with him.’6 From the colonial point of view, the Governor had just missed a possible opportunity of stopping the Cattle-Killing in its tracks. If Sarhili was genuinely uncertain about what to do next – and his invitation to Brownlee seems to indicate that he
was – then the very presence of a government man at the Gxarha might have provoked a confrontation between the prophets and the Xhosa King which could have wrecked the movement. Such an opportunity was never to return.
Having thus rejected the suggestions of both his top subordinates and having made it very difficult for either of them to take the initiative again, the onus now devolved on Grey to devise a colonial response to the escalating crisis of the Cattle-Killing movement. He left Cape Town towards the end of August, and after spending several days in Grahamstown, he arrived in King William’s Town on 2 September with a new administrative policy already in his pocket.7 Quite typically, this new policy was based not on any practical experience of the situation, but on Grey’s own abstract logic and his memories of New Zealand.
Far from delaying his innovations until the Cattle-Killing crisis had passed, Grey seized the opportunity to tighten the screws on the chiefs yet further. They would continue to receive their salaries as before, but the money previously allocated to their councillors was to be taken for the pay of ‘headmen’ directly appointed by the government. The main duty of these headmen was to organise an unpaid police force in each district, which would be responsible for maintaining order and restoring stolen property. Effective control in the districts would thus pass from the chief to the magistrate, and Grey correctly anticipated that he would ‘get a much firmer hold on the country’ than ever before. The new system, though rationalised in terms of the disorders expected to follow the Cattle-Killing, was not in fact a reaction to the movement at all but a stubbornly consistent decision to pursue his policies as if nothing extraordinary was happening.
The demonic energy which drove the Governor during this visit may have originated in an exalted emotional ‘high’, one of the characteristics of the extraordinary mental condition which Grey always blamed on the wound he had received from the Australian aborigines. It is a remarkable fact, and it cannot have been a coincidence, that each of the three visits Grey paid to British Kaffraria during the height of the Cattle-Killing was undertaken in a state of heightened nervous anxiety, which might account for his manic activity while on the frontier.8 The historical significance of these fits is, however, open to question since his personal instability was more than compensated for by the clarity and consistency of his goals.
We know remarkably little about the month or so that Grey spent on the frontier before he suffered a nervous collapse and returned prostrate to Cape Town. He saw the chiefs privately, each in his own district, avoiding showy public meetings à la Sir Harry Smith and leaving no written records of his proceedings. It seems as if he warned the chiefs against killing their cattle and urged them to cultivate their fields. The chiefs were clearly anxious to placate the Governor, and several issued strong statements condemning the Cattle-Killing movement.9 But Grey’s main purpose was not to suppress the Cattle-Killing but to impose his new administrative system on the reluctant Xhosa. He explained this to the chiefs and gave them to understand that they had no option but to accept it. Then he rode away thinking, perhaps, as he informed the Secretary of State in London, that he got along well with the Xhosa, and that they were not in any way hostile to the colonial administration.10
But Grey had got it wrong again. His visit was the very reverse of a success. Far from damping down the Cattle-Killing, his dictatorial new measures only fanned the flames of resentment which fed the growing movement. No sooner had he left Sandile’s meeting than a party of latecomers arrived and asked the assembled councillors to tell them what had happened.11 The unbelievers expected Sandile to praise the Governor politely according to the conventions of Xhosa oratory, to reassure them that nothing was wrong, and to take the opportunity to exhort his followers to resist the Cattle-Killing. Instead Sandile, advised by the believers, refused to say anything at all. Since it was inconceivable that Sandile would make a public attack on the Governor, his silence signified that this was a serious matter which could not be discussed openly but would have to be dealt with more discreetly. Certainly, the mood of the meeting was hostile to the Governor and to Mhlakaza’s opponents. Sandile’s brother-in-law, one of the leading unbelievers, left the Great Place in despair and all the unbelievers were desperately cast down.
Three days later Sandile, who – whatever his private thoughts – had consistently opposed the Cattle-Killing in public, informed Brownlee that he would not cultivate, that he was afraid, that a Mfengu who tried to cultivate had been rooted to the spot, unable to leave it. Brownlee called a group of labourers off the public works and made them cultivate in front of the chief and, even though none of them was rooted to the spot, Sandile nevertheless insisted that he was afraid, conceding only that he would cultivate if all the other Xhosa cultivated as well. The net effect of Grey’s intervention therefore was to turn the most important chief in British Kaffraria from a passive opponent of the Cattle-Killing into an active though secretive believer.
Even in the pro-colonial chiefdoms of Anta, Oba and Kama, the new system was received with reluctance and suspicion, and the chiefs were astounded and shocked by the fact that their opinions were neither requested nor desired.12 After six weeks of attempting to implement the new system among Anta’s and Oba’s people, Magistrate Robertson confessed that he was still ‘laying the foundations’. Magistrate Reeve, in Kama’s country, found that faithful ally’s ‘vacillating disposition requires much management and patience before I can get him to understand any new arrangement, and that I have to give him time’. Old Chief Bhotomane’s attitude of feigned stupidity obliged Magistrate Lucas to come to him three days running and on each day Bhotomane claimed he had forgotten everything he was told the day before. In the end Lucas was forced to try and make all the new arrangements on his own.
The strongest resistance of all came from Chief Phatho whose territory straddled the vital road link between King William’s Town and the port of East London.13 Phatho had gone into the Cattle-Killing from the beginning and had driven his luckless magistrate, Harold Vigne, close to despair. Vigne was never told about Phatho’s law cases or any of Phatho’s doings ‘except in false versions made for my ears’. Phatho’s councillors would not even speak to him, except in the chief’s presence. It was clear that Phatho was not going to fall in with Grey’s plans. He would not send his men to the stations appointed for the road police. There was no food for them, he said. They would quarrel with each other. Many of the people who lived along the road were properly the subjects of his brother-in-law, not of himself. What would the government do if he did not accept the plan? Would the government fight? Vigne did his best to meet all these objections, but he got nowhere with the new system. The councillors demanded coffee, sugar, tobacco and extra pay. They mocked Vigne to his face and they refused his orders outright. They did not go to their stations.
The reaction against Grey’s visit was still in full swing when the flames of the Cattle-Killing were fanned even higher by the arrival of Kapu, a messenger from Sarhili. About 19 September the Xhosa King had held a great meeting attended by all his principal men.14 This had endorsed Sarhili’s renewed enthusiasm for the Cattle-Killing and ordered messengers sent to all the chiefs in accordance with Mhlakaza’s instructions. Kapu informed Sandile, somewhat untruthfully, that Sarhili had seen the new people at the mouth of the Kei, that he had spoken to them, that they had ordered him to kill all his cattle, finish his corn, throw away his charms and tell all the chiefs under him to do the same. Having thus delivered his message to Sandile, Kapu moved off south to inform the chiefs Mhala and Phatho.
Probably because he realised that the whole matter would have to come out into the open eventually, Chief Mhala decided to treat Kapu’s message in a formal manner. He called a public meeting and he sent his Great Son Makinana to inform Magistrate Gawler.15 Grey, who was still in King William’s Town, was pleased by this sign, as he thought it, of Mhala’s loyalty and sent him a friendly letter urging him to oppose the Cattle-
Killing. He sent to Sandile asking him why he had not reported Kapu’s presence.
To Sarhili, Grey sent a harsh and threatening communication. After warning the King that continued cattle-killing would cause starvation and disorder, the Governor demanded that he stop it forthwith. He wrote:
I shall consider you as the guilty party and will punish you as such. You have seen that I have been a good friend to you and your people, and I desire to continue so – But if you force me to take a contrary course you shall find me a better enemy than I have been a friend, for your conduct has been most unprovoked.16
Sarhili was unhappy to see the government messenger and, even before he knew what Grey’s letter contained, he was very reluctant to receive it. He had long been worried about the colonial reaction to the Cattle-Killing, and although Mhlakaza had told him that the English would be tamely acquiescent ‘like a stabled horse’, the King must have had his doubts. He had not expected Mhala to disclose his message to the colonial authorities and he was angry about this new and unwanted distraction.17
But once Sarhili had received the Governor’s letter, he knew that he had to reply. He called a meeting of his councillors and together they considered their formal response. They understood that Grey was threatening them, but since they could not please the Governor without giving up the prophecies, they decided to temporise. Sarhili sent a representative named Xoseni to King William’s Town ‘to know from Maclean’s mouth whether these really are the Governor’s words, and wants to know why the Governor says he will at once bring trouble upon Kreli. What wrong has he done?’ Xoseni emphasised that Sarhili did not want a war, and said that even if the English sent an army into his country Sarhili would not resist them. Maclean replied that even as they were speaking, a new messenger from Sarhili was visiting the British Kaffrarian chiefs. ‘I have no word for Kreli, except the Governor’s letter,’ he concluded.18