by Peires, Jeff
16 CO 3122 W Fynn-C Mills, 17 Jan. 1866; BK 81 Trial of Umhala, 23 Sept. 1858.
17 GH 8/35 Schedule 93, 24 June 1858, Statement of Mjuza, 24 June 1858.
18 All references to the trial of Mhala are from the very full details in GH 8/36 Schedule 129, 5 Oct. 1858. Porter’s memorandum and Grey’s response to it, both of a later date, have been filed with this schedule.
19 BK 14 Examination of Nonkosi the Umpongo Prophetess, before the Honourable Henry Barrington. Gawler was present throughout.
20 BK 2 F Travers-J Maclean, 25 July 1858.
21 MIC 172/2, Reel 8, Cory Library, USPG Archive, Journal of W Greenstock, 15 Oct. 1858.
CHAPTER 8 – Kaffir Relief
CHAPTER 8
Kaffir Relief
1. THE POOR CALVES OF THE ROAD
The continuous eating, drinking and dancing which characterised the Cattle-Killing at its height made it all the more difficult for the believers to conceptualise the famine which would follow the feast. Because they were allowed to partake only of freshly slaughtered cattle, there was more meat lying around than anyone could eat, and visiting believers were welcomed at every believing homestead. In those parts of Phatho’s and Kama’s districts which had been severely affected by drought, lungsickness and the prophecies of Nongqawuse’s predecessors, there were many people depending on such visits for subsistence as early as August 1856.1 As time passed and feasts became less frequent and less plentiful, the believers attempted to slow the rate of slaughter, killing more reluctantly and attempting to preserve their milk-cows to the end.2 But they were trapped by the evil logic of the Cattle-Killing, that they could not fairly expect the fulfilment of the prophecies until they had wholly fulfilled the orders of the prophets to slaughter every last head of cattle.
For a time, the believers staved off hunger by using the proceeds of the sale of their hides and ornaments to puchase food from the traders and the Mfengu. Even though these had laid in good stocks of corn in anticipation of the expected demand, the desperate hunger of the believers soon pushed the price of maize and sorghum to five and even eight times its normal level.3 In addition to grain the believers were able to survive – up to a point – on the edible roots and berries which they often ate to bridge the hungry months between sowing and harvest. As early as November 1856, there were several homesteads which were completely dependent on what they could gather from the veld. By April 1857, ‘large numbers of people – the whole population of kraals – [could] be seen in the open country, digging for roots, others gather in the inside bark from the mimosa thorn, and all presenting an abject appearance’.4 The believers tightened their lambiles (belts worn during times of famine to still the pains of hunger) and waited hopefully for the day of fulfilment.
It did not come. Early in October 1856 the child of a diviner, who had destroyed all his cattle and corn in 1855, died in Phatho’s country, the first of some 40 000 victims of the prophecies.5 Other children in the district fainted from hunger. By January 1857, deaths of children and old people were regular occurrences in all the strongholds of the Cattle-Killing. The believers, secure in the belief of their own coming resurrection, simply said that they had gone to call the other dead home.6 Nevertheless they sold their horses, their guns, their spades, their hoes, their jack-chains and everything else they had.7 They stole from the unbelievers and they stole from each other. They boiled up old bones that had been bleaching in the sun for years, and ate the broth as soup. They broke into the stables around East London and ate the meal meant for the horses.8 Desperate to keep alive, they ate food that they would not normally have contemplated, such as horses, pigs and shellfish. They stole and ate the well-fed dogs of the white settlers in King William’s Town. They even tried to eat grass.9 In a very few cases, believers maddened with hunger attempted to kill and eat little children.10
The majority of believers, though starving themselves, were horrified by this last excess and hunted down and killed any who were suspected of cannibalism. Indeed, cannibalism or attempted cannibalism was a sign of insanity rather than hunger. In Gcalekaland, a man driven mad by guilt killed his wife and children because he could not bear to hear their reproaches, and at least two others committed suicide. Parents snatched the bread their children had begged, and deserted children they could no longer feed. Mothers whose breasts had long dried up were forced to choose between their children, usually taking the food from those liable to die and giving it to the older and stronger children who might still conceivably survive. On other occasions whole families sat down to die as one, and for years afterwards pathetic little clusters of skeletons might be found under the shadow of a single tree, the parents and their children dead together.11
Some, perhaps, were hoping to cling to life until the next harvest came around. Most, however, simply sat, waiting for death or resurrection, which ever came first. Many feared to apply for work in the Colony, believing that if they did so they would be transported overseas. Commissioner Brownlee found ‘many wretched objects’ sitting motionless in their homesteads, saying that they did not know how to work, or saying ‘in the most apathetic manner that there was no help for them and if they died, they died’. Dying wives watched helplessly while the family dogs ate the corpses of their husbands. There are reports of children falling down from hunger and unable to rise again, and one missionary referred to starvation victims receiving relief ‘cast[ing] a wistful glance at the food and [falling] down dead at our feet’. Other believers perished by fire when the grass dwellings in which they had been abandoned caught alight.12
Many believers never quite stopped hoping till the last moment, and stayed at home in the expectation of the imminent fulfilment of the prophecies.
One poor old man was found dead with his head over-hanging his corn pit. He had gone with his last breath to look if it had not yet been filled, and falling, never rose again.13
Some had dug such great pits to ensure a massive bounty of the new corn that when they got down into them to see if any corn had appeared, they were unable to get up again and died just so. In other cases, the empty pits were used as graves for the mass burial of the dead. But most bodies were left unburied in the places where death had overtaken them, there to be picked at by vultures and gnawed at by dogs.
Death was not always the result of starvation, pure and simple. Cold, for example, was a great killer, and on especially cold days the believers simply ‘lay down and died like rotten sheep among the houses’. The efforts of the hungry to eat strange roots and berries in the absence of more usual foods often resulted in dysentry or diarrhoea, and the starving often died helplessly immobilised in pools of their own vomit and faeces. Even worse was the bloating of the body which accompanied malnutrition, where the skin burst into sores and swelled out like a balloon before sloughing off in sheets, as in this case, described by Dr Fitzgerald:
[A boy] about sixteen years of age was very much emaciated and covered with large bloody blisters from head to foot. On enquiring the cause I was informed that they had been living for some time on nothing but roots and gum, that as soon as they arrived at this [homestead] they eat Kaffir corn, that this boy immediately after eating was seized with vomiting and purging, followed by large bloody blisters all over the body.
The vitality of the body appeared so reduced that wherever the slightest pressure was made, decomposition and destruction of the skin immediately took place. Of this body it might be truly said that before life was extinct the exterior was fast running into decomposition. I sent out a mattress to be filled with grass and a blanket as this poor lad had only a hard cows hide to cover his raw and blistered body with. I also sent everything necessary for his case in the shape of suitable food and medicine, but I am sorry to add without any further effect than to mitigate his sufferings as he has since died.14
Another case, related by an inhabitant of
King William’s Town, was that of a ‘skeleton child, endeavouring vainly to suck milk from a starved mother … so reduced in vitality that the pressure of the mother’s arms produced sloughing of the body which was covered over in putrid sores’. Fitzgerald and his small team did their best, and the putrid smell of mimosa and diarrhoea, which infected his consulting chambers and frightened away even the army from the neighbourhood of the hospital, afflicted the good doctor all his life. Even so, the hard core of believers preferred to die rather than trust a white man, and they deliberately hid the sick from their only possible means of salvation.
The Xhosa historian WW Gqoba recounts the story of a group of old women, who had gone to a place called Ngxwangu where the new people were expected to appear, and were deserted by their younger, less feeble companions.
It is said that on the morrow of the eighth day, when nothing had occurred, then the young people said, ‘Let us go and investigate … Stay here, and we will tell you what has happened.’ Then all the people who still had strength departed.
Those old women of Ngxwangu stayed until one morning they picked up their walking sticks and headed for Peelton mission. Some left with speed, others walked and fell, others had difficulty getting up, those arriving from behind simply walked past without helping those who had already collapsed. Those were sad and evil days …
It is said that when they came to that high spot [along their route] those who were leading were heard to say, ‘Today, we are the poor calves of the road, the eighth day has passed, we are left behind by those who have the power to walk.’15
Very many never made it. The dead and dying lay about the roads and the dongas, lost to all sense of feeling. Their skins were cracked and their eyes were sunk, and their swollen joints contrasted pathetically with tiny waists made even narrower by tightened hunger belts.
Those who survived were so emaciated that they ‘resembled apes rather than human beings’, while the children looked more like monkeys or bats. Many had lost their voices, and could make only indistinct sounds in their throats like the chirping of birds. Mentally and emotionally, they seemed ‘stupid from want and indifferent as to their fate’, moving more by instinct than by conscious will. And as this ghastly procession of skeletons converged on the capital of British Kaffraria in the desperate hope of some assistance, it seemed to one observer that the prophecies had indeed come true, that the dead had risen from their graves at last, and were walking towards King William’s Town.16
1 GH 20/2/1 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 25 Aug. 1856.
2 Grahamstown Journal, 27 Dec. 1856.
3 London Missionary Society papers, Box 30, H Kayser-LMS, 23 Jan. 1858; J Brownlee-LMS, 5 Jan. 1858.
4 MIC 172/2, Reel 1, Cory Library, H Waters Journal, 31 July, 9 Sept. 1856; King William’s Town Gazette, 3 Jan. 1857; GH 8/30 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 7 Dec. 1856.
5 Microfilm ZP 1/1/217, Cape Archives, R Birt-G Grey, 3 Oct. 1856. For calculations of approximate mortality in the Cattle-Killing, see Chapter 10, Note 4.
6 J Goldswain (1949), Vol. 2, p.191.
7 Cape Argus, 21 Feb. 1857; King William’s Town Gazette, 28 March 1857.
8 King William’s Town Gazette, 13 June 1857; MS 15413, Cory Library, RF Hornabrook, ‘Cattle killing mania’.
9 King William’s Town Gazette, 21 March 1857; Goldswain (1949), Vol. 2, p.194; GH 8/50 J Crouch-J Maclean, 29 Oct. 1857; MIC 172/2, Reel 1, Cory Library, W Greenstock Journal, 22 Sept. 1857.
10 One is tempted to dismiss these reports as fantasy, but there seem to be a few well-attested cases. See Goldswain (1949), Vol. 2, pp.193-4; Cape Argus, 3 March 1858; GH 8/32 J Crouch-J Maclean, 2 July 1857; King William’s Town Gazette, 31 Oct. 1857.
11 King William’s Town Gazette, 26 Sept. 1857; MS 15413, Cory Library, Hornabrook, ‘Cattle killing mania’; MS 3329, Cory Library, J Ross-n.a. 30 Oct. 1856; Theal (1876), p.55.
12 BK 71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 20 July, 1 Oct. 1857; MIC 172/2, Reel 1, Cory Library, H Waters Journal, 30 July 1857; GH 8/32 J Maclean-F Travers, 5 July 1857.
13 C Brownlee (1916), p.137; Cory Interviews, Cory Library, No. 109, Somana, 24 Jan. 1910, No. 112, Maseti, Jan. 1910.
14 Cape Argus, 3 March 1858; King William’s Town Gazette, 1 Aug. 1857; PR 3624, Cory Library, Letterbook of Dr J Fitzgerald, Report on the state of the gaol in King William’s Town, 15 March 1858; GH 8/32 Dr Wilmans-J Fitzgerald, 2 July 1857; Burton (1950), p.73.
15 Gqoba (1888), Part II.
16 GH 8/50 F Reeve-J Maclean, 23 Aug. 1857; Cory Interviews, Cory Library, No. 119, J Crouch, 16 April 1913; King William’s Town Gazette, 8 Aug., 31 Oct. 1857; Berlin Mission Archives, Abt. III, A Kropf-BMS, Report for second half-year, 1857.
2. NO BREAD FOR THE IDLE
On 2 May 1857, the following advertisement appeared in the King William’s Town Gazette:
DESTITUTE KAFFIR CHILDREN
The Missionary with Umhala is constrained to appeal earnestly to the Benevolent throughout the Colony for assistance, to enable him to feed the STARVING CHILDREN of the T’Slambie Tribe. Great numbers are reduced (by no fault of their own, but the errors of their parents) to a wretched existence on GUM and ROOTS, and even these resources are now failing them.
This appeal is made in the confident hope that good Christians will help these poor children in the time of their need.
It is difficult to believe that anyone could object to this simple request, yet such indeed was the case. The Gazette responded in its editorial of 13 June:
Is the [Xhosa] a fit and proper subject for the receipt of charity? The question having a reference to the generality – not individuals – we answer No … Were all [Xhosa]land to be maintained in charity for six months, the effect upon the natives would probably be to unman them and leave them in a worse position than they are now. Instead of stirring themselves up and endeavouring to gain a livelihood, they would remain listless, as at present … Work is to be had in plenty if the trouble of application be not too great. Notwithstanding that thousands of hungry [Xhosa] have already entered the Colony in search of employment, there is still labour open to thousands more …
They [cannot] appreciate a generous action. They would consequently attribute, as they always have done, our charity either to some unexpected weakness or fear. Sir George Grey has distinctly given them to understand that there is plenty of work for all those who would be industrious but that there is no bread for the idle … It would consequently be a direct interference in the policy of His Excellency. It would be a premium on idleness, and prevent the [Xhosa] from becoming what we would find it so much to our and their interest for them to be – labourers.
Clearly, humanity and compassion could not be allowed free rein in relieving the mass starvation that followed the Great Disappointment. When they arrived in King William’s Town, the hungry Xhosa found themselves in a world whose idea of charitable aid was dictated by values which differed greatly from the simple concept of ubuntu (the quality of being human) which had perished along with their ruined homesteads. ‘The [Xhosa] would have helped the English if they had killed their cattle,’ said Sarhili, and there is no reason to disbelieve him.1 But the Victorian concepts of charity operative in the Colony, even as applied to Europeans, were based on the British Poor Law Report of 1834, which made a careful distinction between ‘indigence’, that is ‘the state of a person unable to labour’, and ‘poverty’, that is, ‘the state of one who, in order to obtain a mere subsistence is forced to have recourse to labour’.2 By this definition, the Xhosa were poverty-stricken rather than indigent. The Victorians considered poverty to be ‘the natural, the primitive, the general and the unchangeable lot of man’, and it was not, therefore, to be pitied. Some writers even thought that poverty was good for the indolent lower classes, since
‘it is only hunger which can spur and goad them on to labour’.3 Labour was good for children too, and the childless philosopher Jeremy Bentham did not scruple to exalt the benefits of apprenticeship above the sanctity of family life.4 The central tenet of the New Poor Law was that ‘no relief [be] allowed to be given to the able-bodied or their families, except in return for adequate labour’.5
These attitudes were naturally most congenial to the industrialising middle classes of England, and, after the Whig (Liberal) election victory of 1830, they completely ousted notions of charity based on Tory paternalism, Christian humanity or Radical convictions of the natural rights of man. Bentham’s disciples readily equated the principle of the ‘greatest happiness of the greatest number’ with that of the ‘greatest national profit’, and condemned ‘reckless private charity’ for increasing the misery of the poor by violating the ‘laws’ of economics. Such charity was not ‘real benevolence’, but was benevolent in name only.6
Concepts of charity rooted in the labour needs of industrial Britain were not inapplicable at the Cape, which had suffered a chronic shortage of agricultural labour ever since the emancipation of the slaves in 1834. Twenty of twenty-one Cape districts responding to a questionnaire in 1848 reported a scarcity of unskilled labour; ten of these spoke of a ‘great dearth’ or worse. The labour shortage in Malmesbury district was such that ‘in many places the oats and rye are still uncut, consequently the damage caused through want of labour is estimated at some thousand muids of corn’. Not only were ‘millions of acres of fertile land … lying waste … from a scarcity of suitable available labour’, but the effects were felt throughout the remainder of the Cape economy in the form of higher wages and prices.7 Sir Harry Smith’s attempts to remedy the situation by introducing a vagrancy law and indenturing Xhosa apprentices did much to provoke the War of Mlanjeni and the Kat River Rebellion. The aftermath of the war brought no alteration. ‘I come from a wool-producing district and I can state that the farmers cannot get their sheep washed,’ complained the representative for Beaufort West in 1854, and the Graaff-Reinet Herald declared that there was ‘no evil so detrimental and of such magnitude as the want of labour’.8 Some pressed for white immigration, while others pinned their hopes on Chinese labour. More hard-headedly, the tough farmers on the Cape Select Committee for Frontier Defence called for: