by Peires, Jeff
(c) The Broad-Chested One
The noted anthropologist Monica Wilson called the Cattle-Killing movement a ‘pagan reaction’ to the pressures of colonial and Christian influence. But far from being a retreat into a pre-Christian shell, the Cattle-Killing owed its very existence to biblical doctrines. As the Bishop of Cape Town put it, ‘it is curious to observe how much this false prophet Umhlakaza borrows from Christianity and the Bible’.32 We, who know that Mhlakaza was no heathen witchdoctor but a converted Anglican, a man who could recite the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments and most of the liturgy, do not find it so surprising, but it is nevertheless necessary to explain why so many ordinary Xhosa found certain aspects of Christianity extremely appealing.
Mission propagation of Christianity had been proceeding continuously in Xhosaland since 1817, and, despite the small number of formal conversions, elements of Christian teaching had spread far and wide. The concept of resurrection in particular had gained strength from the disruption of funeral rituals after the smallpox epidemic of the 1770s. Despite the efforts of the early Xhosa prophets to reintroduce the custom of burial, the majority of Xhosa continued to drive out their dying relatives in order to evade the religious necessity of abandoning a homestead where a death had occurred. By 1850 some homesteads had been in the same locality for two or three generations.33 The picture is one of an increasingly overcrowded population unhealthily squeezed together in a rapidly deteriorating environment. The spiritual effect of such material conditions may easily be imagined. Overcrowding collapsed the spatial distinctions which separated the world of the dead from that of the living. No longer were the dead safely ‘sent home’ to a distant place of the ancestors. No longer were their deserted homestead sites clearly distinguishable from the occupied homesteads of their descendants. Instead, the living residents of a site must have been constantly disturbed by thoughts of their ancestors roaming the homestead that was once their own. Perhaps in no other respect did colonial dispossession contribute more directly to the Cattle-Killing movement.
Nxele, who prophesied between 1816 and 1819, did much to popularise some of the more apocalyptic Christian ideas. Long before Mhlakaza, he had fused the new Christian doctrines with established Xhosa ideas to create a new religious synthesis which was to exert a powerful influence on the Cattle-Killing movement. He taught of a white God and a black God, and of God’s son, who had been murdered by the whites. Nxele maintained that he had been sent from the uHlanga to lungisa (put right) the world. He denied the finality of death. ‘People do not die,’ he said, ‘they go to that chief [of Heaven and Earth].’34 He ordered people to abandon witchcraft, to slaughter all red cattle and to destroy stores of corn. He predicted that the ancestors and new herds of cattle would rise from the dead, and he attempted to resurrect them out of a cavern below Gompo rock.
After the defeat of the Xhosa in the Fifth Frontier War (1818-9), Nxele was imprisoned on Robben Island. He was drowned in an attempt to escape, but right up to the Cattle-Killing, the Xhosa never abandoned the expectation of his return and he was repeatedly seen in dreams and visions. It was believed that he was the leader of the Russian army which was defeating the British in the Crimea, and when the new people appeared to Nongqawuse they said ‘that they were the people often spoken of in former days by Lynx [Nxele] and Umlanjeni’.35 The figure of Nxele would doubtless have played a leading part in the prophecies but for the vigorous rejection of Nongqawuse by Mjuza, his son and heir. Nevertheless, it was to Nxele that the Cattle-Killing owed many of its beliefs concerning uHlanga, sacrifice, the lungisa of the earth and the resurrection of the dead.
A new and revolutionary brand of Christianity was introduced to the Xhosa by the Khoi rebels who fought alongside them during the War of Mlanjeni. Mission products all, the Khoi read their Bibles regularly and they prepared themselves for battle by the devout singing of hymns. A commissariat messenger by the name of David Lavelot incited mutiny among the Cape Mounted Rifles in the course of daily prayer meetings, and the mutineers were characterised as men ‘of a peculiarly religious turn of mind, or … under the influence of a species of fanaticism’. The following letter by one of their leaders displays an unmistakably millenarian turn of mind:
Trust, therefore, in the Lord (whose character is known to be unfriendly to injustice), and undertake your work, and he will give us prosperity – a work for your mother-land and freedom, for it is now the time, yea, the appointed time, and no other.36
This was a version of Christianity very different from that taught by the missionaries and in places like the Waterkloof, where Maqoma’s Xhosa lived cooped up with Khoi rebels for more than 18 months, it could hardly have failed to make some impact on Xhosa beliefs.
The experiences of the first Christian missions to be established with King Sarhili and Chief Mhala, the two foremost supporters of the Cattle-Killing, show that these notoriously heathen rulers were surprisingly interested in certain aspects of Christianity. We have already seen how impressed Sarhili was by the ‘large Pictorial Bible’ which the missionary Waters showed him. More than a year later, in the midst of disappointment and starvation, Sarhili visited Waters again and impressed him by his knowledge of the story of Lazarus, who rose from the dead. Ten years after the Cattle-Killing, the embittered and fiercely anti-Christian king could still be ‘electrified’ by a discussion on the immortality of the soul, and raise pertinent questions concerning the death of the son of God.37
More than five years before the Cattle-Killing, Chief Mhala, who ‘did not seem much interested’ in the other aspects of Christianity, asked a visiting Bishop several ‘questions about the soul coming back after death to revisit those still in the flesh’ and got ‘so much excited that the perspiration ran down his naked body’. Greenstock, the missionary working among Mhala’s people, found that they were constantly asking questions on religious subjects. The origin of evil was a great favourite, and they wondered what people ate in heaven. Mhala felt that the Cattle-Killing doctrines were quite compatible with Christianity. ‘Why should not cattle rise as well as human beings?’ he asked. ‘They have spirits and were created on the same day with man.’ Many Xhosa thought that parts of the Bible were far more improbable than the ideas of Nongqawuse. They doubted that God had exhausted all His Wisdom when he gave ‘His Book’ to man. ‘Might He not still have another revelation to make?’ they asked. Mhala’s Great Son felt that it was only out of prejudice that the whites refused to accept the Cattle-Killing prophecies. ‘Why should you English set down the [Xhosa] as fools?’ he asked. ‘You certainly have great skill in arts and manufactures but may not we surpass you in our knowledge of other things?’ The believers felt not only that Christianity was compatible with Cattle-Killing beliefs, but even that Christianity positively corroborated Nongqawuse.
The Christian element was an essential component of the identity of the spirits who appeared to Nongqawuse and promised to send forth new people and new cattle upon the earth. William Gqoba rendered the name of the first spirit as ‘Napakade, son of Sifuba-sibanzi’ and the same two names occur, together with uHlanga, in the colonial records, although ‘Napakade’ or ‘UnguNapakade’ (‘Eternal One’) is usually given precedence over ‘Sifuba-sibanzi’ (‘Broad-Breasted One’). The introduction of two new figures rather than one probably reflects the Christian dichotomy between God and Christ, and Xhosa uncertainty regarding the relative status of the two probably reflects the problems they had in defining a relationship in which God/Napakade is senior but Christ/Sifuba-sibanzi is more active. The following quotation, describing the attempts of a Cattle-Killing prophetess to account for the failure of her prophecies demonstrates this confusion:
She [Nonkosi, a prophetess in Mhala’s country] talked of Sifuba-sibanzi, that is the broad-breasted one … and Ungunapakade, the eternal one. The Broad-Breasted One will manifest himself to the Eternal One, and the Eternal One will invite the Broad-Breasted One to r
ise from death and he will do the same. And the latter [Napakade] will make it known to the other [Sifuba-sibanzi] that he must wait for his arising so that he [Sifuba-sibanzi] can follow him [Napakade]. But Sifuba-sibanzi said that he had spoken of a rising first so he wanted to arise first.38
It is difficult to be sure when these two names originated. It has been argued that Sifuba-sibanzi, which is today a universally recognised praise name for Jesus Christ, was originally a Khoi name for God, and certainly it fits in well with the more anthropomorphised Khoi view of the Deity. Most Xhosa, however, associate the name with the teachings of the Xhosa Christian prophet Ntsikana (d. 1822), who was a contemporary of Nxele. The Xhosa historian SEK Mqhayi, writing in the 1920s, said that Mlanjeni predicted just before he died that he was going across the sea to meet Sifuba-sibanzi. Yet Chief Commissioner Maclean, who was usually well-informed, referred to the name as a ‘new creation’, and several contemporary reports link the name Sifuba-sibanzi to the Russians,39 whose supposed victory in the Crimea produced the spate of millenarian prophecies immediately preceding those of Nongqawuse.
The origin of the name ‘Napakade’ (Eternal One) is even more obscure. However it is clear that both ‘Broad-Chested One’ and ‘Eternal One’ are typical of the sort of heroic apostrophe which fits in as well with Xhosa praise poetry as with Christian moral tales in the vein of Pilgrim’s Progress, which have been immensely popular in Xhosaland. The fusion of Xhosa and Christian prophecies, united in the figure of Sifuba-sibanzi, created an apocalyptic tradition which outlasted the Cattle-Killing and remained potent well into the twentieth century.
Then at last there will be a general rising in which a mother will quarrel with her own daughter-in-law; the son will rise against his father, and friend against friend. Men will stab each other’s shoulders, and there will be such a crossing and recrossing as can only be likened to ants gathering stalks of dried grass. But these things are only as travail pains of child-birth. Then the end will come – the beginning of peace for which there had been no pre-concerted council or arrangement of man. The reign of BROAD-BREAST (Sifuba-sibanzi) will commence and continue in the lasting peace of the Son of Man.40
These late nineteenth-century prophecies relating to migrant labour (the ants crossing and recrossing, bearing heavy loads) and to the collapse of social ties and family life aptly epitomise more than a century of Xhosa history – and help to explain the millenarian thread which preceded and actually survived the disaster of the Great Cattle-Killing.
Conclusion
The Xhosa Cattle-Killing movement, suggested in the first instance by the lungsickness epidemic of 1853, tapped a deep-seated emotional and spiritual malaise resulting from material deprivation and military defeat. By blaming the epidemic on witchcraft and proposing to cleanse the earth of its taint, Nongqawuse’s prophecies provided an explanation for current circumstances and a rationale for future action. The ideology of the Cattle-Killing movement combined old and new ideas, both of which were equally necessary to its credibility. Familiar beliefs concerning sacrifice, Creation and the ancestors rooted the movement in a conceptual world which the Xhosa understood and trusted. As the Reverend Philip said, ‘When … the girl spoke of the rising up, she was merely setting a spark to things that were already known.’41 The new concepts of an expected redeemer and an earthly resurrection, unwittingly disseminated by the missions via the prophet Nxele, seemed to provide a possible means of escape from the hopeless and desolate situation in which the Xhosa found themselves. Even the Bible, a book which the colonial intruders themselves claimed to be the truth, appeared to confirm Nongqawuse’s prophecies. The central beliefs of the Xhosa Cattle-Killing were neither irrational nor atavistic. Ironically, it was probably because they were so rational and so appropriate that they ultimately proved to be so fatal.
1 The most perceptive accounts thus far, those of Wilson (1969, 1977) and Zarwan (n.d.), have pointed out some of the more obvious components of the Cattle-Killing belief but fall far short of providing a satisfactory explanation. Wilson, for example, writes that ‘the insistence on purification, renouncing witchcraft, and sacrifice was all part of the traditional pattern’, while Zarwan thinks that ‘the cattle-killings were traditional in form and the leaders were diviners of the traditional pattern’. This emphasis on ‘tradition’ is wholly misleading. Although various forms of purification, divination, sacrifice and witchcraft were practised in Xhosaland long before the Cattle-Killing, these practices were far too diverse and far too liable to change over time to be fossilised conceptually as ‘traditional patterns’. Whatever ‘traditional patterns’ may have existed in Xhosaland before 1856, they certainly did not include mass destruction of basic subsistence needs or the expectation of an imminent resurrection of the dead.
In their well-meant attempts to show that the Cattle-Killing was not entirely devoid of logic, Wilson and Zarwan have missed the crucial element of innovation in the movement. Despite their sympathetic approach, the Wilson-Zarwan view that ‘the pagan reaction … was to seek supernatural aid’ is not very far removed from the opinion of previous writers that the Xhosa relapsed into ‘superstition’ and ‘delusion’ when confronted with repeated military defeats.
2 BK 70 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 25 Aug. 1856; GH 8/29 Information communicated to Chief Commissioner, 1, 4 July 1856; Acc 793 J Gawler-J Maclean, 25 July 1856.
3 EG Sihele, ‘Ibali labaThembu’, uncatalogued MS, Cory Library, Grahamstown; Lakeman (1880), p.141; Merriman (1957), pp. 215-6.
4 Andrew Smith, ‘Kaffir notes’, South African Museum, Cape Town, p.373.
5 Interview with Chief Ndumiso Bhotomane, conducted by Professor Harold Scheub, Kentani District, 1968.
6 MS 172c Grey Collection, South African Library, ‘Kafir legends and history by Wm. Kekale Kaye’; GH 8/33 Schedule 69 of 1858, ‘Examination of the Kafir prophetess Nonqause before Major Gawler’, 27 April 1858.
7 Gqoba, ‘Isizatu’, Part I.
8 GH 8/28 J Maclean-G Grey, 17 July 1856; GH 8/29 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 29 June 1856; BK 81 J Gawler-J Maclean, 14 Jan. 1857.
9 J Warner in Maclean (1858), p.89; GH 8/29 F Reeve-J Maclean, 11 July 1856. Also W Shaw (1860), p.446.
10 Ggoba,’Isizatu’, Part II.
11 It is worth noting that the failure of the wardoctor Mlanjeni’s promise to turn bullets into water was attributed by him to the failure of certain young warriors to heed his ban on sexual intercourse before battle. Interview with W Nkabi, Bulembu Location, King William’s Town District, 24 Aug. 1975; Interview with M Soga, Kobonqaba Location, Kentani District, 25 Aug. 1983.
12 SEK Mqhayi, ‘A! Sifuba-sibanzi!’ in Imibengo, ed. WG Bennie (Lovedale: Mission Press, 1935), pp.189-90. I am indebted to Professor Wandile Kuse for drawing this to my attention and helping me with the translation.
13 MS 9063 Cory Library, N Falati, ‘The story of Ntsikana’ (1895); Acc 793 J Gawler-J Maclean, 14 July 1856; BK 109 H Vigne-J Maclean, 20 Aug. 1856; Bishop R Gray’s Journal in ‘Missions to the heathen’, The Church Chronicle, Vol. 2 (Grahamstown,1881), p.330; KWT Gazette, 14 Aug. 1856.
14 JJR Jolobe, Ilitha (Johannesburg: AP, 1959), p.57; Kropf and Godfrey (1915), p.375; GH 8/27 Information communicated to the Chief Commissioner, 4 July 1856.
15 MS 172c and 172d, South African Library, Cape Town, ‘Kafir legends and history by Wm Kekale Kaye’; W. Philip, letter to Isigidimi samaXosa, 2 July 1888.
16 Philip, in Isigidimi; Bhotomane, interview; Ngubane (1977), p.115.
17 Warner, in Maclean (1858), p.82.
18 Gqoba, ‘Isizatu’, Part I; Berlin Missionberichte, 1858, p.38.
19 CO 2950 J Warner-R Southey, 29 July 1857; GH 8/29 Information communicated to the Chief Commissioner, 4 July 1856; Bhotomane, interview; Ggoba
, ‘Isizatu’, Part I.
20 Jordan (1973), p.74.
21 Ray (1976), p.41.
22 Kay (1833), p.194.
23 CO 2950 J Warner-R Southey, 29 July 1857; LG 410 J Warner-R Southey, 14 July 1857; GH 8/29 F Reeve-J Maclean, 2 Aug. 1856; BK 89 Information communicated by Jan Tshatshu, 15 Oct. 1856; GH 8/29 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 22 Oct. 1856.
24 H Lichtenstein (1812-5), Vol. 1, p.314.
25 W Shaw (1972), p.103.
26 C Brownlee (1916), pp.126-7. A report in the Grahamstown Journal, 9 Aug. 1856, stated that the new people were expected to rise ‘out of a pit or cave in the mouth of the Kei river’.
27 JH Soga (n.d.), p.324; Kropf and Godfrey (1915), p.46.
28 MS 9063, Cory Library. N Falati, ‘The story of Ntsikana’.
29 MS 15, 413, Cory Library, RF Hornabrook, ‘Cattle killing mania’; Kay (1833), p.208; C Rose, quoted in JWD Moodie (1835), Vol. 2, p.331; GH 28/71 J Maclean-G Grey, 11 Aug. 1856; GH 8/71 H Vigne-J Maclean, 9 Aug. 1856.
30 BK 81 J Gawler-J Maclean, 25 Sept. 1856; MS 8295, Cory Library, C Brownlee-n.a., 18 Oct. 1856; MS 3328 Cory Library, J Ross-J Laing, 11 Oct. 1856; London Missionary Society Archives, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, Box 30, FG Kayser-LMS, Oct. 1856; MS 9043, Cory Library, Diary of J Laing, 1 Oct. 1856.