Dead will Arise

by Peires, Jeff

  12 GH 20/2/1 J Maclean-G Grey, 7 Sept. 1856.

  13 BK 89 Secret Information, 26 April 1857; Uncatalogued MSS, Cory Library, Diary of Clerk to Colonel Maclean, 14 May 1857; GH 8/36 Schedule 129, 5 Oct. 1858.

  14 BK 83 H Vigne-J Maclean, 3 Oct. 1857.

  15 GH 8/50 J Maclean-G Grey, 14 May 1857; BK 71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 17 Oct. 1857.

  16 GH 20/2/1 J Maclean-G Grey, 5 Nov. 1857; GH 8/50 J Gawler-J Maclean, 25 Dec. 1857; GH 8/50 J Maclean-G Grey, 31 Dec. 1857.

  17 BK 23 H Barrington-J Maclean, 17 May 1858.

  18 GH 8/34 Enclosures to Schedule 34, 8 March 1858; BK 14 H Barrington-J Maclean, 27 Feb. 1858; BK 2 G Grey, enclosed in F Travers-J Maclean, 25 July 1858, Grey’s fury at the acquittal of Phatho is clearly seen by his vindictive refusal to give Captain Fielding, one of the special magistrates involved in the acquittal, a full-time position later on. The Phatho case is specifically cited as a reason for this. See GH 8/34 Schedule 40, 15 March 1858.

  19 BK 140 J Maclean-R Taylor, 20 April 1859. The duel between Stokwe and his pursuers is a minor epic which I am sorry to be unable to deal with fully here. See, for example, BK 83 H Vigne-J Maclean, 31 March 1858.

  4. THE END OF MHALA

  After the departure of the unbelievers to Gawler’s camp on the Tshabo and the failure of the June prophecies, the silence of desolation descended on Mhala’s district. The country was virtually empty outside of Mhala’s Great Place and St Luke’s Anglican mission. Greenstock described the scene as it existed in September 1857.

  The country is almost deserted. The greater part of the natives have gone to seek employment in the Colony. A person may travel miles in [Xhosaland] through parts once densely populated, without meeting a single human being or seeing a single head of cattle. Umhala still holds on in his old place – he gets a little help from the Government, but he is becoming very thin, and both he and his son Mackinnon evidently suffer much from anxiety about the sad condition into which they have brought themselves by their blind obedience to Nongaule …

  Umhala’s power is but the shadow of what it was – his followers are a few infirm old men. He says he obeyed the prophetess and killed his cattle, and neglected to plant, because he believed that he should be restored to youth and see the resurrection of his father and all his dead relatives.1

  Even this little that Mhala retained was soon to be taken from him. Those few of his remaining followers who had planted in the early spring found they could not hold out until harvest time, and abandoned their homesteads to look for work. All but one of his wives ran away. Two of them came to his arch-enemy, Gawler, saying they were starving. He sent them into the Colony for service.2 But Mhala’s greatest grief was reserved for his son Makinana, loyal despite his unbelief, who had lost the rich patrimony of the house of Ndlambe, while his junior brother Smith raised himself to greatness on his father’s ruin. Mhala hoped that Makinana would be ‘picked up’ by the Anglican mission, and he himself came to church for the first time in two years, while Makinana was assiduous in attendance. But Maclean and Gawler disliked Greenstock, whom they regarded as far too liberal – an opinion shared by his Bishop, who wrote of Greenstock that ‘he is respected by the [Xhosa] for his simple Christian character, but has not rigour of mind enough to deal with them’. St Luke’s was closed down and Greenstock packed off to East London, where it was hoped that his overly Christian and unrigorous approach would no longer interfere with the good government of British Kaffraria. His mission was relocated on a new site, out of the way of the white colonists whom Grey wished to settle in Mhala’s country.3

  Mhala was left alone to face the coming storm. ‘I have yielded,’ he told Gawler. ‘I am dying of hunger. I have fallen – I fell because it was said that my forefather Rarabe would appear, and my father would appear, and my mother would appear, and that I should not be old.’ But Gawler was no longer interested in reconciliation. He told the old chief that if he was hungry, he could go to Lesotho or Mpondoland, where there was plenty of food. He warned Mhala to stay away from ‘his’ people, the unbelievers, and reprimanded Smith in public for talking to his father.4 As the danger of civil war receded, the heads of the colonial authorities were increasingly filled with notions of the ‘chiefs’ plot’, and Mhala was a prime suspect. If Mhala rode around too much, if he talked to the unbelievers, if he was even ‘in better spirits than he ought to be’, then it was very obvious that he was up to something. If Mhala’s followers managed to find food and shelter among hospitable Mfengu within the colonial border, then Maclean maintained that the chief was planning an invasion. And indeed there were signs that all but the strongest of the unbelievers were taking pity on their old chief in his misery, sympathising with him, even wanting him back. But Grey was determined to get rid of him:

  It is quite clear … that Umhala was the very chief leader in the late great plot. If evidence can be obtained that will convict him of the intention to levy war against the Queen or implicate him in recent murders and robberies, he should be apprehended and brought to trial.5

  Such evidence was indeed at hand. It will be remembered that in September 1857 the police had arrested the Mpongo prophetess, Nonkosi. When they arrived at Gawler’s place, Nonkosi had frustrated all of his questions by obsessively repeating that the dead cattle would certainly rise. Maclean wrote to Grey that he would examine Nonkosi, and ‘if nothing could be made of her’, she would be kept under surveillance at the Native Hospital in King William’s Town.6

  Two weeks later, Maclean wrote to the hospital and asked Dr Fitzgerald to take permanent charge of the prophetess ‘as she is reported to be of weak intellect’.7 But Gawler was not quite ready to quit and, by 15 October, he had extracted a coherent statement from Nonkosi, in which she described her interviews with Mlanjeni, in the occasional presence of six spirits of departed chiefs who sat silently on the water ‘as we sit on the ground’.8 This was not very promising material for the ‘chiefs’ plot’ and so Gawler was forced to conclude that the young girl had been ‘imposed upon by … half-dozen fellows chosen for their general resemblance to the old chiefs they represented’.

  Suspicion for these ‘tricks’ (still only a hypothesis of Gawler’s) naturally fell on Nonkosi’s uncle Nkwintsha, a leading believer who was Mhala’s councillor in charge of the Mpongo River area. Nonkosi’s interrogators decided to push this line of questioning, and when the prophetess was handed over to Maclean, she suddenly and mysteriously broke down and confessed that she had acted under Nkwintsha’s instructions. In his dispatch on the subject, Maclean remarked piously that he had discontinued his questions at an early stage, lest these should influence the child’s testimony.9 This is misleading to say the least, since, by Maclean’s own statement, Nonkosi had ‘persisted in her misrepresentations’ for more than a month before her sudden, amazing, ‘spontaneous’ confession.10

  Gawler, who had got nothing out of Nonkosi, made amends by successfully interrogating Nkwintsha. Nkwintsha was made to confess that:

  Nonkosi said nothing of herself; all that she said was from Umhala through me … the object was a war …. The cattle-killing was got up to deprive the people of property that required so many to look after, the people would go more free to fight, and the English would have nothing to take. It failed because it was not done quick enough; half were starved before the other had killed.11

  In Maclean’s capable hands, Nkwintsha’s story became even further embellished. He described how he had impersonated cattle bellowing in the water, and (this gem is an interpolation in the original script):

  Whenever I was alone, I could not refrain from laughing when I thought of the deceptions I practiced at the vley, and I often roared out ‘Are [Xhosas] fools to be thus deceived?’12

  Grey was delighted with Nkwintsha’s statements and urged that Mhala be brought to trial for levying war against the Que
en. Gawler persuaded Mhala to visit the Chief Commissioner to beg forgiveness, thus giving Maclean a chance to arrest him without any trouble.13 But Attorney General Barrington spoiled the party by warning that the evidence was still inadequate, and Mhala was allowed to depart in peace, ignorant of his narrow escape. Barrington finally solved the evidence problem by threatening Nkwintsha with 20 years’ transportation for robbery.14 Nkwintsha suddenly remembered several warlike conversations between various chiefs and councillors. He also made two attempts to break out of prison (presumably he had stopped roaring with laughter), but there was to be no escape for him.

  At long last, Gawler got the go-ahead to arrest his old enemy. But it was not to prove easy. Smith Mhala, possibly remorseful and possibly disillusioned by challenges to his leadership within the unbelievers’ camp, tipped off his father that they were coming to get him. Mhala took to the bush. As he pointed out at his trial, he could easily have fled to Sarhili, or Faku, or Moshoeshoe. But he could not bear to leave the country over which he had once been chief. Gawler’s police followed hot on his trail, and he and Makinana were forced to split up. Mhala was old and he was hungry; of his followers only one or two remained. At times he was close to surrendering, but his councillors told him he would be better off dying of starvation. He was sustained by news of the Indian Mutiny, and he managed to send Sandile a message saying he should not sleep at home for the government was trying to arrest all the chiefs before the Indians arrived.15

  Two brothers named Nduna and Mbilini, unbelievers who had joined Gawler’s police, remained loyal to their old chief. They kept him supplied with food and secretly informed him of the movements of the patrols. The police surprised Mhala’s hideout in May 1857, but the councillors fended them off while Mhala escaped down a kloof.16 After five months in hiding, Bulungwa caught one of Mhala’s servants and forced him to talk. Another implacable enemy, Mjuza the son of Nxele, armed 16 police and found the wildcat’s last lair in a secret place on the Kubusi River, surrounded by immense rocks and thick bush. As Mjuza approached the hut in which he was hiding, the chief appeared armed in the doorway and dared the policeman to come on at him. But Mjuza, younger and more athletic, sprang on Mhala and forced him to the ground. In the hut they found the chief’s last and most treasured possession – a bundle of spears belonging to Ndlambe, the dead father whom Mhala had so much wished to see.17

  As might be expected, Nkwintsha was the star witness for the prosecution. But even under the expert tuition of Major Gawler, his confession left much to be desired. To begin with, it conflicted with Nonkosi’s statement in respect of the all-important issue of Mhala’s role. In his initial statements of October and November 1857, and again in January 1858, Nkwintsha repeatedly said that he had instructed Nonkosi on Mhala’s orders, and he never alleged that Mhala had instructed Nonkosi himself. But in his statement at the trial, he maintained that Mhala had personally described the appearance of his dead forefathers to the young prophetess, and that Mhala had told her that he approved of Nkwintsha’s actions.18 Nonkosi, however, did not implicate Mhala at any point. He often came to see her, he gave her presents, but his part was entirely that of the innocent dupe. Indeed, in one (unpublished) examination, Nonkosi specifically remarked that Nkwintsha deliberately misled Mhala into thinking that he had gone away so that the chief would not notice him manipulating the prophetess from behind the bushes.19

  Unsurprisingly, these discrepancies were not picked up by Mhala’s judges, who were all officers and officials. There was no jury and no defence counsel. Of the six witnesses Mhala had wanted, only two – Gawler and Smith, his renegade son – actually appeared. Although he was not familiar with British legal procedures, Mhala was able to make one telling point in cross-examining Nonkosi – that the alleged deceptions were instigated not by himself but by Nkwintsha.

  William Porter, the Cape Attorney General, commented that the verdict was a foregone conclusion:

  I cannot, however, say that the evidence appears to me to be such as would satisfy a Jury composed of strangers to the country. I mean no disrespect to Members of the court when I say that, in all probability, they were perfectly satisfied before the trial began that plots had been hatching, and that, where plots were hatching, the old Kaffrarian Fox was sure to be at work. They had no need of witnesses. But had they brought sceptical doubts, instead of formed convictions, to the trial of the case, I lean to the conclusion that much more evidence would have been obtained, and that the evidence actually given, would scarcely have been deemed conclusive.

  Porter attacked the court for failing to ask Nonkosi whether she had ever been personally instructed by Mhala, and added that, in the event of any discrepancy, the evidence of the child Nonkosi should have been preferred to that of the adult Nkwintsha. On the broader legal front, Porter pointed out that Mhala was being tried under British laws inapplicable to Kaffraria. There was considerable doubt that Mhala was ‘a subject of our lady the Queen’ in the legal sense, which meant that he could not be charged with treason. Porter concluded his comment by pointing out that if Mhala were indeed a threat to the peace of the country, then it would be far better for the integrity of British justice that he be openly detained under martial law than convicted ‘under a defective statute, supported by what strikes me as a somewhat defective evidence’.

  Grey could have ruled it a mistrial and started all over again, as he had done when his kangaroo court foolishly found Chief Phatho innocent of the charges against him.20 Instead, Grey sentenced Mhala to a mere five years’ imprisonment, with provision for remission of sentence ‘if it should subsequently be thought that the Attorney-General is right and I am wrong’. It is hard to overstate the significance of this concession. Whereas the other chiefs had been convicted for common crimes such as theft, Mhala alone was charged with treason. Not only he, but the entire Cattle-Killing movement, was in the dock for levying war against the Queen. Had the trial been a success, Mhala would have been transported for life and the Cattle-Killing exposed as a treacherous plot. By retreating in the face of Porter’s carefully reasoned arguments, Grey tacitly admitted that he was wrong, that Mhala was innocent, and that the ‘chiefs’ plot’ remained, at most, an unproven assumption. As Mhala told his judges, he had slaughtered on account of Nongqawuse, not on account of a war. They would have done well to heed his final appeal.

  I have nothing further to say but I wish this recorded and await what is in the heart of the court and beg them to remember that words do not perish, that though I may die [you had better judge me truly] that nothing hereafter may arise to disturb you. People die of sickness, and are killed in war; my words seem few but they are long enough.

  Long enough indeed! Grey had intended the trial of Mhala to be the final proof that the Cattle-Killing was a plot of the chiefs. But it proved instead that, if any plots were afoot, they had been hatched not by the chiefs but by Sir George Grey himself.

  Mhala’s agony was not, however, quite over yet.

  When the soldiers brought him [Mhala] down to the beach, they put him under a crane, and told him they were going to hang him. They actually put the rope round him to frighten him, but an officer stopped them.

  When they got on board ship … Umhala suddenly gave three most dreadful yells which startled them a good deal at first. But they found out the deposed chief was terrified at the appearance of the waves as they broke outside, and he fancied the sea was coming in upon him. This made him cry out for fear … Umhala was very low-spirited, and sat on deck looking wistfully at the land that was once his own.21

  1 MIC 172/2, Reel 1, Cory Library, USPG Archives, W Greenstock-USPG, 2 Oct. 1856.

  2 Acc 793 J Gawler-J Maclean, 17 Oct. 1856.

  3 MIC 172/2, Cory Library, USPG Archives. Reel 1, Journal of W Greenstock, 24 Sept., 19 Oct. 1857, 9 Jan. 1858; Reel (?), H Cotterill-H Bullock, 7 Aug. 1857. Greenstock did not last long in East London, from which
town he was removed for being too attentive to the prisoners in the local jail.

  4 BK 81 Memorandum, enclosed in J Gawler-J Maclean, 12 Dec. 1857; GH 8/36 Schedule 129, 5 Oct. 1858.

  5 Acc 793 J Gawler-J Maclean, 11 Jan. 1857; GH 8/50 J Maclean-G Grey, 30 Nov. 1857; GH 30/4 G Grey-J Maclean, 6 Dec. 1856; GH 8/50 J Maclean- G Grey, 10 Sept. 1857. Gawler and Maclean were especially worried about the jea­lousies that had arisen within the ranks of the unbelievers, and they were afraid that Mhala might take advantage of them. Even so, the accusations they levelled against the chief were quite absurd.

  6 GH 8/50 J Maclean-G Grey, 24 Sept. 1857; MIC 172/2, Cory Library, USPG Archives, W Greenstock Journal, 22 Sept. 1857.

  7 GH 8/33 J Maclean-J Fitzgerald, 10 Oct. 1857.

  8 BK 81 J Gawler-J Maclean, 15 Oct. 1857.

  9 This is the examination which was printed in Cape Parliamentary Paper G 5 of 1858. Maclean’s success astonished Gawler, who wrote to Maclean congratulating him. BK 81 J Gawler-J Maclean, 24 Oct. 1857.

  10 GH 8/50 J Maclean-G Grey, 26 Oct. 1857.

  11 Cape Parliamentary Paper G 5 of 1858, p.4.

  12 BK 81 Examination of Kwitshi (Nkwintsha], enclosed in J Gawler-J Maclean, 24 Oct. 1857.

  13 BK 81 J Gawler-J Maclean, 12 Dec. 1857; GH 8/50 J Maclean-G Grey, 14 Dec. 1857.

  14 GH 8/50 H Barrington-J Maclean, 19 Jan. 1858; BK 14 Examination of Kwitshi, 14 Jan. 1858.

  15 Uncatalogued MSS, Cory Library, Diary of Clerk to Colonel Maclean, 19 Jan. 1856; GH 20/2/1 C Lange-J Maclean, 9 March 1858; BK 78 Information received, 1 April 1858; GH 20/2/1 J Maclean-G Grey, 29 March 1858; BK 71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 16 Feb. 1858.