by Peires, Jeff
Table 1: Known Dispositions of Xhosa Chiefs
Chief
Cattle-Killing
Land*
Religion
Lungsick
Sarhili
Strong believer
Unchanged
Strong precolonial
Heavy
Mhala
Strong believer
Unchanged
Strong precolonial
Heavy
Phatho
Strong believer
Unchanged
Strong precolonial
Heavy
Maqoma
Strong believer
Severe
Strong precolonial
Heavy
Bhotomane
Strong believer
Severe losses
Precolonial
Heavy
Sandile
Waverer
Severe losses
Precolonial
Delayed arrival
Feni
Waverer
Severe losses
Precolonial
Delayed arrival
Kama
Strong unbeliever
Gainer
Christian
Heavy
Dyani
Strong unbeliever
Unchanged
Christian
Heavy
Tshatshu
Chief
Cattle-Killing
Land*
Religion
Lungsick
Toyise
Strong unbeliever
Gainer
Strong precolonia
Heavy
Anta
Strong unbeliever
Severe losses
Precolonial
Light
Mfengu
Strong unbelievers
Large gains
Christian leanings
Heavy
chiefs
*Refers to effect of Frontier Wars on land holdings.
Although land loss in war led to material deprivation and thereby contributed to the tensions which exploded in the Cattle-Killing, it is impossible to make a direct correlation between land loss and participation in the movement. If land loss had been an immediate cause, we would expect those chiefdoms which lost most land to have slaughtered most cattle. Instead, it was Sarhili, Mhala and Phatho, who had lost no land whatever in the 1850-3 War, who took the lead in killing cattle, while the Ngqika, who lost most, lagged behind and Anta, a Ngqika chief, slaughtered not at all.
The lack of congruence between political attitudes towards the Colony and belief in Nongqawuse’s prophecies is even more marked in the case of commoners. Soga, a leading unbeliever in Sandile’s chiefdom, played a leading part in the ‘Tyhume valley massacres’ of military settlers in 1850. Mjuza, the son of the wardoctor Nxele, led the attack on Butterworth mission in 1851 and was later shot in the stomach by British troops. When he heard that the Russians were coming, he prepared to place himself at their head. Yet he became one of Nongqawuse’s most determined opponents.10 Political commitments may, of course, have influenced the decisions of many individuals during the Cattle-Killing, but they clearly cannot fully explain the division between believers and unbelievers.
Religious faith
Perhaps, it may be argued, we are mistaken in looking for material causes when the decisions must have been taken on the basis of personal faith. Most Xhosa remained orientated towards the precolonial religious tradition, while a few leaned towards Christianity. Some Xhosa were credulous of diviners and prophecies, while others were frankly sceptical. Should one not, perhaps, see the decision to slaughter as an individual act of conscience explicable only in religious terms?
Once more, this is an approach which seems reasonable enough at first sight but fails to stand up to detailed analysis. Certainly, Kama and Dyani Tshatshu, the only professedly Christian chiefs, vigorously opposed the Cattle-Killing and the mission stations seem to have retained almost all their adherents. But it would be a grave mistake to perceive a sharp dichotomy between the precolonial tradition and Christian religion. The Cattle-Killing incorporated many Christian elements which the believers themselves recognised and used as arguments in favour of the truth of the prophecies. ‘All that was done [in the Cattle-Killing],’ wrote one missionary, ‘was in the name of God, or that His Word says so. It was as profusely as it was vainly used.’ Sarhili himself was much taken by a picture of Christ walking on the sea, and startled the local missionary by his knowledge of the story of the raising of Lazarus.
On the other hand, many of the chiefs on the unbelieving side displayed little affinity with Christianity. Toyise was the last chief in British Kaffraria to execute a man for witchcraft, and at his trial he and his councillors ‘declared to the last their firm belief both in the power of those who used bewitching matter and in the power of “smelling out” the offender’. Mjuza, the son of wardoctor Nxele, believed that his father was the leader of the Russians who had returned from the dead, and he was prepared to believe the prophecies of Nongqawuse until he visited her in person and concluded she was a fake. Chief Ngubo, another strong unbeliever, burned a woman to death for witchcraft several years after the Cattle-Killing. Soga, who refused to believe Nongqawuse, had trusted in the powers of the wardoctor, Mlanjeni.11 If, indeed, most Xhosa made their choice according to their existing predispositions, it is clear that neither Christianity nor precolonial religion per se was a determining factor.
Kin, age and gender
The bonds of kinship were not lightly set aside in Xhosa society, and during the Cattle-Killing they were stretched to the limit to rally the waverers. Many Xhosa killed their cattle unwillingly, according to WW Gqoba, ‘but they were threatened by the stabbing-spears of their relatives’. On the other side, Moto Kantolo remembers that his unbelieving great-grandfather was supported by all his brothers. Ngcuka, Soga’s younger brother, was killed defending the family herds.12 Nevertheless, the Ngqika Commissioner seems not to have exaggerated when he wrote that ‘the differences arising in this matter caused estrangement between parents and children, between husbands and wives, and for the time severed all the ties of kinship and friendship’.13
Cleavages were most pronounced in chiefly families where the quest for political power was added to the other stakes involved. Makinana
, Chief Mhala’s Great Son, stood by his believing father although he personally doubted the truth of the prophecies. Smith, Mhala’s second-ranking son, used his unbelief to ingratiate himself with the magistate and was consequently recognised as chief of the Ndlambe Xhosa. Chief Maqoma’s sons split along similar lines. Chief Sandile wavered throughout the movement with his two full brothers taking strong stands on opposite sides.14 Similar divisions appeared in commoner families, although documentation is lacking. Nkonki, an unbeliever, begged cattle from his believing elder brother to prevent them being slaughtered. Ndayi, the leader of the Ndlambe Xhosa unbelievers, was unable to convince his cousin Tshisela, who killed all his cattle. The Quluba family was likewise split: the father and some sons were believers, but another son and his cousins preserved their cattle.15
It is not possible to trace any consistent pattern in these family divisions. It might seem probable that the older generation, with their greater herds of cattle accumulated over a lifetime, might be more resistant to the movement than younger men, whose expectations of wealth and inheritance were frustrated or had perished in the lungsickness epidemic. Certainly, there was no shortage of ‘old councillors’ among the small number of unbelievers, and Magistrate Gawler observed that since his old councillors had abandoned the believing chief Mhala, he had surrounded himself with ‘a number of young second rate counsellors ambitious of distinction and ready to take their chance in forwarding any of the current nonsense’. On the other hand, advancing age may also bring with it increased fear of death, and many believers, including Mhala himself, were certainly motivated by the hope that they would be ‘made young again’. Sometimes it was the young heirs who resisted their fathers’ desires to slaughter their inheritance. Futshane, one of Mhala’s old councillors, resisted belief for over a year but something snapped at the very end, and he began killing furiously to the alarm of his son, who fled with his own herds as fast as he could. Similarly, Feni, a councillor of Chief Xhoxho’s, violently persecuted his son for the latter’s unbelief, and Qongo, a councillor of Sandile’s, attempted to kill his son for the same reason. William Mtoba of the Ndlambe district is remembered as opposing the Cattle-Killing while still a rwala, that is, a young man recently circumcised and not yet married.16
The idea that women’s oppression in male-dominated societies such as that of the Xhosa predisposes women to participation in ecstatic religious movements has become a dubious cliché, but one that will not go away.17 Certainly, there is plenty of evidence that Xhosa women overwhelmingly supported a movement which promised that ‘nobody would ever live a troubled life’ and that people would get ‘whatever they wanted’.18 Nongqawuse herself, her cousin Nombande, and Nonkosi, a Cattle-Killing prophetess in British Kaffraria, were all young girls. The view that there was something peculiarly feminine and adolescent in Nongqawuse’s behaviour was one shared by many Xhosa men, as this story from oral tradition indicates:
[The unbelieving Chief Anta] had a councillor named Nombhaca, who … said to Anta when they were in the court, when the other chiefs had agreed [to kill their cattle] and he said ‘Take a bite of qaqaqa grass, and see if you can swallow it nicely.’ Anta listened to these words … [Then] Nombhaca said they must bring that girl for him to lie with, and then she would stop telling such lies.19
This oral tradition clearly implies that Nongqawuse’s visions were the result of the unconscious sexual frustrations of an adolescent girl. Many Xhosa men, asked to explain Nongqawuse’s visions, simply assert that she was a binqa, a female, and that was the sort of behaviour one expected from a binqa. According to a regrettably brief report, the unbelieving Chief Ngubo visited Nongqawuse, ‘beat her and called her an impostor’. The image is one of an indignant father chastising his daughter for causing trouble. One cannot imagine Ngubo confronting an adult male in this manner.20
Because of their own inferior position in Xhosa society women were probably more inclined to welcome change than men. Widows, in particular, fallen from their high social position, might be expected to hope for the resurrection of their late husbands. Chief Sandile’s mother urged him to kill his cattle, saying, ‘It is all very well for you, Sandile. You have your wives and children, but I am solitary.’ Chief Mqhayi’s widows ‘cried and howled’ in their attempts to get his young heir Jali to kill his cattle. The widow of Sandile’s brother Tyhali was likewise incessant in demanding that her son, Feni, should kill.21 Another of Tyhali’s widows, the mother of Chief Oba, fled to her paternal home (as did all her sons’ wives) to force Oba to kill. The mother of Kona Maqoma was so angry with him for working in his gardens that she left him – until hunger forced her back. The wives of the unbeliever Ndayi fled out of terror at his unbelief. Clearly, women had everything to hope for from a future in which widows might recover their lost status and wives become free at last of the burden of wearisome and oppressive labour for their husbands. The economic element behind female belief was clearly perceived by Tiyo Soga, the Xhosa missionary, who wrote:
The women, the cultivators of the soil in Africa, were the warmest supporters of the prophet, as they rejoiced in the anticipation of getting crops without labour.22
Even so, there seem to have been many women who were sceptical of Nongqawuse’s prophecies. Noposi, the Great Wife of Sandile, worked her gardens with Sandile’s permission until she was stopped by the pressure of her co-wives. A Mfengu woman was murdered when she attempted to turn her Thembu husband against killing his cattle. At least one young woman was critical of her father’s cattle-killing beliefs:
I used to laugh at my father, and he would call me a mad English girl and say he could not call me his child if I was so foolish a girl … My father scolded me and said: ‘Can you not see the things on the side of that hill?’ ‘No: I can see nothing but thorn bushes.’ He said that it was not bushes but I thought that the men had eaten too much corn and meat, and drunk too much of the [Xhosa] beer to know what they saw … So my father got very angry with me: he told me if I dared to say it was bushes again he would kill me. But I saw nothing else.23
In this case, quite obviously, the full patriarchal authority of the male homestead head was engaged on the side of the believers, and it was the ‘foolish young girl’ who resisted wishful thinking. Clearly, the believer/unbeliever divide followed no set pattern of kinship, age or even gender.
The amathamba and the amagogotya
We have yet to consider the effects of social class, which seems to deserve special attention in as much as it lies at the root of the names which the Xhosa themselves gave to the two contending parties. To understand this fully, however, we must pause for a closer look at the structure of Xhosa society in the 1850s.
The effects of 50 years of colonial pressure had fatally wounded but not yet killed the old structure of precolonial Xhosa society. This had revolved around the relationship between chiefs and commoners, in which the chief as guarantor and nominal owner of the land and cattle of the commoners had exacted tribute from them and collected judicial fines in his court. The scale of exactions had been minimal, however, since there was rivalry between the chiefs and infinite land available for exploitation. In order to maintain their authority, the chiefs were forced to win the favour of influential commoners (‘councillors’) by redistributing most of the tribute and judicial fines they received. Nevertheless, the chiefs retained the right, which they exercised as often as they dared, to bring their subjects to court and to confiscate their possessions for real or imaginary offences.24
The colonial presence afforded wealthy councillors new opportunities to escape the restrictive powers of the chiefs. Ironically enough, old forms of sociability broke down less because of the impoverishment of the many than because of the enrichment of a few. Before the advent of an open market for food, rich men had invited their neighbours around when they slaughtered a beast or opened a grainpit. But now meat could be sold by the portion (thengisa isimausi – to sell like a trader
)25 and corn could be sold by the bucket in exchange for colonial money, a form of wealth which the chiefs could neither provide nor control. At the same time, the chiefs’ capacity to regulate the wealth of their councillors was limited by the decisive action of the colonial authorities against witchcraft accusations, accurately described at the time as the ‘[Xhosa] state engine for the removal of the obnoxious’.26 Prosperous commoners were thus partially liberated from the rapacity of their chiefs, and, shortly before the Cattle-Killing, Governor Grey held forth the prospect of total liberation in the form of magistrates who would take over the chiefs’ judicial duties and employ the councillors directly and independently of the chiefs.27
A new disposition of social forces was thus emerging on the very eve of the Cattle-Killing. On the one hand, the chiefs, formerly the rulers and economic exploiters of their subjects, now stood forth bravely as the champions and defenders of the old order, which, with all its faults, had guaranteed land and cattle to all. On the other side stood the ‘many well-disposed persons’ described by one missionary, ‘who would be glad … to be relieved of feudal servitude and be subject to British authority’.28
It is only fair to the unbelievers to point out that many of them were courageous and patriotic individuals who had fought hard for their country and people in the earlier frontier wars. Only with the crisis of the Cattle-Killing did they come to realise that their interests lay unambiguously on the British side.