Dead will Arise
Page 24
Tyala then, in a stentorian voice shouted: ‘No! Soga, you are wrong. There is the offender (pointing to Sandile.) Put the rope round his neck. He is no longer a child to be led by Baba and Umlunguzi. He is responsible for the troubles which are over the land.’
At this Umlunguzi jumped up and approached brandishing his assegai, exclaiming, ‘Traitor! Dare you accuse our chief in our hearing?’ Tyala replied: ‘Yes, I do! and I repeat that he is the guilty person.’
As the two men were about to fall upon one another, I rushed between them; took Tyala by the arm and told him to sit down … Turning to Baba and Umlunguzi I said: ‘This is your work. How have you discharged the trust committed to you by Sandile’s father, who left Sandile an infant in your care? … I have done. I came to save Sandile, and those who had gone into the cattle-killing movement. I have failed. Your counsels have prevailed against mine. You have led Sandile into trouble. I leave you to get him out of it as best you can. I can do nothing more for him.’
Baba then arose and said: ‘Why do you trouble with us? You tell us that hunger will destroy us – we will see – and if it does it will be your testimony against us. Leave us alone and do not trouble any more with us.’
I replied: ‘Baba, I will record your words in my book, and the day will come when I shall remind you of them. It is not for you that I now feel, but for the helpless women and children, who in a few days will be starving all over the country.’ At this point my feelings were too strong for me, and I sat down and covered my face with my hands and wept.19
The eight appointed days sped by as the believers stifled their doubts and their hunger with a multitude of last-minute tasks.20 There were new milk-sacks to be sewn, new doors to be made, and courtyards to be scrubbed thoroughly clean. The dwellings of the believers were carefully rethatched to prevent the entry of fiery rain or noxious beasts during the terrible storm which would precede the fulfilment of the prophecies. Remarried widows deserted their husbands and returned to the abandoned homesteads of their late first loves. Chieftainness Sutu, the mother of Sandile, passed the days smoothing out her wrinkles with infinite patience in preparation for her reunion with Ngqika, her long-dead husband. Remaining stocks of corn were scattered in the dirt or put to the torch. Slaughtering was not as intense as on previous occasions, for there was not much left to slaughter. Nevertheless heaps of carcasses were visible in every direction, accompanied by their inevitable companions, the vultures and the carrion crows. Cattle, goats and chickens all had to go, and many steadfast believers killed at the last minute in order to avoid the charge of witchcraft.
Though the people were already beginning to suffer the pangs of hunger, they remained ‘cheerful, living by faith and hourly expecting the new cattle to rise’.21 Some climbed high hills or stood for hours on their rooftops, hoping for an early sight of the new people. Others lit signal fires for fear that their homesteads might be passed by. Sensational rumours – that Nongqawuse had ordered the killing of old people, or the destruction of colonial money – were avidly discussed and repeated.
On 16 February 1857, the long-awaited eighth day, the sun rose as usual about six o’clock, neither late nor blood-red.
The sun rose just like any other sun. The believers withdrew into their houses all the day, fastened tightly behind their many doors, peeping outside occasionally through little holes in their dwellings until the sun disappeared. Meanwhile those who had never believed or done any of the things prescribed went about their usual work.22
‘Now the hopes of the poor people were thrown onto the ninth day. Probably no eyes have greeted a morning light with so much longing as those eyes of the [17th] of February. The morning light came as always, the longed-for freedom it did not bring.’23 As one believer recalled many years later,
I sat outside my hut and saw the sun rise, so did all the people. We watched until midday, yet the sun continued its course. We still watched until the afternoon and yet it did not return, and the people began to despair because they saw this thing was not true.
For several days thereafter, the people sat in rows in front of their homesteads watching the progress of the sun. Some widows and widowers went to sit by the graves of their late husbands and wives. On the 21st, there was a great thunderstorm, and the people rushed to their houses and secured themselves inside, convinced that the great day had arrived at last. But it did not come, not that day, not ever.
1 GH 8/31 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 31 Dec. 1856.
2 GH 8/30 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 19 Dec. 1856.
3 BK 71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 21 Jan. 1856; BK 82 H Lucas-J Maclean, 4 Feb. 1856; BK 81 J Gawler-J Maclean, 26 Jan. 1857; GH 8/50 J Maclean-G Grey, 2 Feb. 1856; GH 8/31 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 5 Feb. 1857.
4 Brownlee (1916), pp.148-9; Acc. 793 J Gawler-J Maclean, 24 Oct. 1856. Descendants of Hlanganise and Tyhala remember their forefathers hiding Sandile’s cattle in Bomvanaland during the period of the Cattle-Killing. Interviews with N Mona and N Somana, Kentani District, 23 and 24 Aug. 1983; C Brownlee-J Maclean, 7 Dec. 1856; Grahamstown Journal, 27 Dec. 1856.
5 Bovine victims, of course. 8/30 J Gawler-J Maclean, 25 Dec. 1856.
6 8/31 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 4 Jan. 1856; MIC 172/2, Reel 8, Cory Library, H Waters-H Cotterill, 10 Jan. 1857. It should not be thought that the reference to the odour is an exaggeration. The Thembu chieftainness Yeliswa attempted to conceal her participation in the Cattle-Killing, but was given away by the smell.
7 GH 8/31 Information communicated, 18 Jan. 1857.
8 MIC 172/2, Reel 8, Cory Library, H Waters-H Cotterill, 10 Jan. 1856.
9 GH 8/50 J Maclean-G Grey, 15 Jan. 1856; BK 71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 21 Jan.1857.
10 GH 8/31 Information communicated, 18 Jan. 1857; BK 71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 20 Jan. 1857.
11 BK 81 J Gawler-J Maclean, 6 Feb. 1856; BK 82 H Lucas-J Maclean, 4 Feb. 1857; LG 410 J Warner-R Southey, 6 Feb. 1857; Berlin Missionberichte (1858), p.39.
12 BK 89 J Crouch-J Maclean, 3 Feb. 1856; BK 89 Substance of statements made to the Chief Commissioner, 5 Feb. 1856; BK 89 Memorandum of Information communicated to the Chief Commissioner, 25 April 1857.
13 BK 83 Memorandum by H Vigne, 11 Feb. 1856; GH 8/31 H Lucas-J Maclean, 14 Feb. 1856.
14 Berlin Missionberichte (1858), p.39.
15 GH 8/50 J Maclean-G Grey, 9 Feb. 1857; BK 89 J Crouch-J Maclean, 9 Feb. 1857.
16 GH 8/31 Information communicated from the Transkei, 24 Feb. 1857.
17 BK 71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 25, 31 Jan. 1856; Interview with Chief Nqwiliso Tyhali, Gqumahashe Location, Victoria East, Aug. 1975.
18 GH 8/31 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 31 Jan. 1857; BK 71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 4 Feb. 1857; Brownlee (1916), p.153.
19 Brownlee (1916), pp.149-51.
20 Chalmers (1878), p.121; R Mullins Diary, Cory Library, 5 Feb. 1857; BK 71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 2 Feb. 1857.
21 Grahamstown Journal, 7 Feb. 1857; Graaff-Reinet Herald, 14 Feb. 1857; R Mullins Diary, Cory Library, 7 Feb. 1857; MS 8172, Cory Library, J Ross-J Laing, 14 March 1857.
22 Gqoba (1888), Part I; GH 8/31 Information communicated by a person from the Transkei, 24 Feb. 1857.
23 Berlin Missionberichte (1858), p.40; Cory Interviews, Cory Library, Interview with Sijako, Jan. 1910.
3. THE AGONY OF THE UNBELIEVERS
The catastrophic failure of 16-17 February stunned the chiefs and the believers. Sarhili, in particular, was described as ‘very much disconcerted and does not know what to do with himself’.1 On receiving a routine message from an old adversary, JC Warner the Thembu agent, the King was moved to a grief-stricken response:
I have been a great fool in listening to lies. I am no longer a chief.
I was a great chief, being as I am the son of Hintza, who left me rich in cattle and people, but I have been deluded into the folly of destroying my cattle and ordering my people to do the same; and now I shall be left alone, as my people must scatter in search of food; thus I am no longer a chief. It is all my own fault; I have no one to blame but myself.2
Nevertheless, Sarhili was furious with the unbelievers, whom he blamed for their treachery, and he placed guards on the drifts to prevent them escaping with their cattle.
Chameleon-like as ever, Chief Sandile removed to the neighbourhood of his unbelieving councillors, saying that he was not bound to Sarhili, who had induced him to ruin himself and his people. Xhoxho, Sandile’s brother, visited Commissioner Brownlee ‘sad and downcast’. ‘The [Xhosa] are ruined, and their chieftainship is gone,’ he said. Sandile, Xhoxho and Feni all begged the Governor to give employment to their people.3 Old Phatho submitted himself at last to his magistrate, Vigne, ‘in low spirits’. His people were leaving him, he said, they had listened too much to Mhlakaza. He, Phatho, wished he had listened to Vigne rather than to Sarhili’s messages. He would go to Fort Murray and work to check thieving. Now he came to borrow money to save his children from starvation. Once, he said wistfully, remembering the days before lungsickness when he owned 2 500 cattle, once he had had plenty of cows to provide thick milk for everyone, but he had killed them all. He hoped the government would pity him and let him have his salary back.4
The colonial authorities, for reasons we have yet to discuss, were no longer interested in the chiefs and were not prepared to let them have their salaries or anything else. Mhlakaza and Nongqawuse were equally unhelpful. Reports from the Gxarha after the Great Disappointment are contradictory, but the prophets seem to have informed the believers ‘that the new people say they do not want to be troubled with the importunity of the [Xhosa], and will make their appearance when they think fit’.5 Rejected by the government and forsaken by the prophets the believers had yet one resource available to them: the cattle of the unbelievers. Even as those of Sarhili’s councillors who had managed to preserve their stock fled from him, the stricken chief vowed that he would kill them all. For it was they who had caused the prophecies to fail. Perhaps he still remembered his words of mid-January: ‘I cannot starve, there are still cattle in the land, and they are mine. I will take them when I require them.’ In Phatho’s country, the believers boasted that they would soon kill the unbelievers and take their cattle. At Sandile’s they declared that they would soon reduce everyone to their own level.6
Fury against the unbelievers had been mounting gradually ever since the spring campaign against cultivation. Then the unbelievers had been threatened by rumours of supernatural punishments and abandoned by believing mothers and wives. As early as September 1856, believing Gcaleka chiefs had been raiding their cattle. By November, it was becoming difficult for unbelievers to travel about the country, for the believers refused them food even while they regaled themselves on sacrificed cattle. In the wake of the December disappointments, Mhlakaza pointed an accusing finger squarely at the amagogotya, blaming them for the failure of the prophecies. Napakade had been ready to rise, he said, with 600 cattle, but the ancestors of the unbelievers had begged for a delay, pleading that their children had not killed their cattle and that they would be consigned to Satan if the others rose too soon. The January failure was likewise blamed on the unbelievers, whose stubbornness had caused the new people to depart in anger, saying, ‘We said that all your cattle were to be killed, you have not done so – we leave you in disgust.’7
The believers insisted that until all existing cattle were destroyed, the new cattle could not come out of the earth. The unbelievers were killing them by their stubborn and selfish refusal to slaughter. Chief Mhala ‘considered a man’s killing his cattle a proof that the man either used no witchcraft or that he put it away now altogether … These people [the unbelievers] are not only guilty of witchcraft but they have stopped the new cattle of the faithful from coming forth and disgusted the new people.’8 The believers shrank from any contact with the impurity of the unbelievers. They would not eat, drink, smoke or even off-saddle near their homesteads, and if an unbeliever so much as stopped at a believing homestead, he might hear the women cry out, ‘He is an unbeliever! Let us go and wash and cleanse ourselves!’ Wives who spoke to unbelievers might be repudiated by their husbands. As time passed, the believers rushed off to purify themselves if they so much as passed an unbeliever on the road by accident. Busakwe, the son of one of Sandile’s councillors, administered an emetic to members of his homestead who had mistakenly eaten the food of unbelievers. In Mhala’s country, the believers shaved off their eyebrows to avoid being mistaken for unbelievers.9
Even when the doubtful finally capitulated to social pressure and killed their cattle, their previous resistance was held against them and they might hear the believers calling out to them, mocking and triumphant, ‘We knew you would yield, your holding out was useless. Pass on! You are unbelievers and unclean. Don’t come near and defile us.’ Or they might shout angrily to the dwindling bands of diehard unbelievers, ‘Go on, you liars and deceivers! You may now ride your horses, but soon you will ride to the devil on them.’10
The hatred of believers for unbelievers ripped whole families apart. Fathers turned on their sons and wives deserted their husbands. In Sandile’s chiefdom, a believer named Qongo tried to murder his son who was an unbeliever, and several other fathers were likewise guilty of violently persecuting their unbelieving children. Conversely, several cases were recorded of grown-up sons expelling their aged fathers from the homestead for refusing to kill, or butchering the family cattle without their fathers’ consent.11 Many wives left their husbands for fear of their unbelief, and many women ‘cried and howled’ as Chief Jali’s mother did in her efforts to get her son to kill his cattle.12 The most curious case was that of a husband and wife, both deaf-mutes, who ‘took different views about the cattle killing, but how they came to understand the subject, I do not know’.13
The leading unbelievers had more than scorn and mockery to worry about. The cattle they had so carefully tended and the gardens they had so painfully cultivated through the longest of seasons were in grave danger, and, as the climax of the movement approached, their very lives seemed at risk. Those who could manage it joined the unbelieving chiefs, especially the resolute Anta, but there were many who were only too aware that their every move was watched and that any attempt to remove their cattle from the territory of their chiefs was, according to established custom, liable to the penalty of seizure and confiscation.
The unbelievers in British Kaffraria looked anxiously to the colonial government for protection. They were greatly encouraged by the example of Magistrate Gawler, who had saved an unbeliever named Bulungwa from certain death by intervening in a witchcraft hunt that had already smelt him out. But Bulungwa’s life owed more to Gawler’s personal bravery than to colonial policy and his request that Bulungwa should be allowed to settle in the Crown Reserve to ensure his future safety was ignored by Maclean.14 The Crown Reserve, confiscated by the government after the War of Mlanjeni and still virtually empty, was set aside for white occupation, and no Xhosa, unbelievers or otherwise, were to be allowed to settle there.
In early December 1856, Ndayi, the leader of the unbelievers in Mhala’s country, approached Gawler saying that he was hated by all and asking for assurances that he would be physically protected. But the magistrate was unable to give the desired response either to this request or to the many that followed it.15 In Sandile’s country, the unbelievers made a secret compact to band together for mutual protection when the crisis came, and in early January they sent a secret delegation to Commissioner Brownlee asking that the government should fix a place for them where they might be free from the ‘oppression of the overwhelming number of believers’ under whose authority many were compelled to kill their cattle without hope of escape.
Brownlee advised them to gather together for protection (which they were doing already, in any case) and warned Sandile against forcing anyone to kill cattle. But he could not point out a place where they would be safe.16
The cruel fact of the matter was that Maclean and Grey had made a definite decision to offer no concrete assistance to the unbelievers. The most they would do was warn the believing chiefs against harming the unbelievers and admit refugees to the shelter of their forts if there was no alternative. ‘We could not send parties throughout Kafirland to defend each person who might be attacked,’ minuted Grey. The best construction that the historian can place on this decision is that Grey and Maclean truly believed that Moshoeshoe and Sarhili were plotting a war against the Colony and did not want to give them a pretext for attacking. The worst is that Grey and Maclean did not care what happened to the unbelievers so long as they stayed off land earmarked for white settlement. A more forward policy in defence of unbelievers might well have preserved many Xhosa from the disaster of the Cattle-Killing.
Many have told me also that were they certain of protection they would not kill or leave their gardens uncultivated but without such protection they would only be keeping their cattle and cultivating their gardens for the benefit of others who would rob them.17
Maclean was less concerned with helping the unbelievers than with keeping them where they could be of maximum use to him, that is back in their own chiefdoms where they could act as a brake on the chiefs and disrupt the plans of the believers. The elderly councillor Mgwagwa, who had worked hard to keep his young chief Jali out of the Cattle-Killing, discovered this when he arrived at Fort Peddie towards the end of December quite certain that his life was in danger for cultivating. Maclean felt that he could not afford to lose Mgwagwa’s influence with Jali and forced the old man to return, accompanied only by vague promises of government protection.18