by Peires, Jeff
For this reason, many millenarian movements have had a dual leadership, a prophet to communicate with the divine and an organiser to provide the proofs and the direction. The more psychotic the prophet, the more he or she requires an organiser to keep the followers satisfied. Two examples must suffice here. Sabbatai Sevi, the Jewish messiah of Smyrna, oscillated between extremes of manic exaltation, when he did extremely odd things like dressing up a fish in baby clothes and carrying it around in a cradle, and deep depression when he hid in his room for prolonged periods. Sabbatai himself never understood his strange actions and did not proclaim his divinity until he met up with a certain Nathan of Gaza, who appointed himself organiser to Sabbatai’s Messiah. A second example is Hung Hsiu-Chu’an, the Heavenly King of the Taiping movement which convulsed China in the nineteenth century. Hung became ill with depression after failing his examinations for the third time. During his illness, he went to Heaven and met Jesus Christ whom he recognised as his elder brother. The local leaders who came forward to join Hung gave themselves the title of Wang [King], and it was these Wangs who did all the governing and fighting. While the Taipings captured the great city of Nanking and threatened the Manchu dynasty, Hung spent his time elaborating and refining the meaning of his initial vision. He failed to meet any of his ministers for more than a year before the collapse of his kingdom, and his sole contribution to the defence of his capital was to set an example to the starving population by feeding himself on grass and roots.12
It is important to note however that the organiser-figures such as Nathan of Gaza and the Taiping Wangs were not simply secular functionaries. They too believed; they too experienced visions and trances. But their visions and trances were subordinate to those of the prophets they served, and they looked to these prophets for direction when their movements were confronted by the failure of the initial prophecies.
Let us try and bring this discussion home to Nongqawuse and Mhlakaza. The primacy of Nongqawuse as the point of contact with the new people is stressed not only by Gqoba and oral tradition, but also in all the colonial documentary sources which relate directly to the scene on the Gxarha River. Nobody but Nongqawuse and her surrogates (such as Nombanda) see the strangers or hear their voices. On the other hand, messages and instructions reaching the outlying chiefdoms always speak of Mhlakaza or the prophet’, never of Nongqawuse or ‘the prophets’. But we need to see the relationship between Nongqawuse and her uncle as consistent rather than contradictory.
Both Gqoba and Maclean’s informants testify to the same chain of divine command. The opening words of the strangers to Nongqawuse are: ‘Take this message to your home, tell them that …’ The next time the strangers appear, the first thing they ask the girls is ‘whether they had told at home, and what was the response?’ They conclude by instructing the girls to ‘tell the big people (abantu abakhulu) that they should call all the chiefs’. Maclean’s informer is equally insistent that the strangers first appeared to Nongqawuse, but that they almost immediately instruct her to communicate with Mhlakaza. The informer’s version further adds (p.99):
We wish you to go to your uncle Umhlakaza, and say to him that we wish to see him, but that he must first kill a beast, wash his body clean, and having thus prepared himself to appear before us in four days time.
Reconsidering this last text, I am inclined to think that I did not give it sufficient weight in The Dead Will Arise. The strangers could not appear to Mhlakaza until he had taken special measures to purify himself. But they could appear to Nongqawuse unexpected and unannounced. Why the difference? The answer, I believe, is also the key to a problem which has long enlivened discussions of the movement, more especially among Xhosa-speakers. Why would the ancestors appear in front of a girl, if indeed she should be called a ‘girl’? The answer surely is that the strangers could appear to Nongqawuse because she was, socially speaking, still a child and a child is pure, uncontaminated, free from sin. For similar reasons, uninitiated Xhosa girls can milk cattle which is forbidden to women who are socially regarded as sexually mature. Conversely, the strangers could not appear before Mhlakaza in his unpurified state lest they too become contaminated by the evil which had defiled the world. Significantly, Gqoba consistently refers to Nongqawuse and her companion as amantombazana, that is young girls, by comparison with abantu bakhulu, that is big people. Going one step further, Nongqawuse’s child status makes her a suitable interlocutor for the new people but an unsuitable interlocutor for the chiefs. Conversely again, Mhlakaza’s adult status makes him unsuitable for the new people, but eminently suitable for the chiefs and other ‘big people’. Hence the new people speak to Nongqawuse, Nongqawuse speaks to Mhlakaza, and Mhlakaza speaks to the chiefs. This pattern is entirely compatible with the old Xhosa worldview and with everything else we know about the cattle-killing movement.
The sources are unanimous that Nongqawuse dominated the scene at the Gxarha itself. But they are equally unanimous that it was Mhlakaza, not Nongqawuse, who conveyed the cattle-killing directives to the wider Xhosa world. I can give only one example, out of literally hundreds. This is a missionary account of Sarhili’s interactions with the prophetic group in January 1857, the eve of the Great Disappointment:13
[Sarhili] was accompanied by 18 of his most important councillors, and 5 000 of his warriors were assembled. They did not dare to approach the kraals of the sanusi (diviner). They had not slaughtered as he had ordered, and were afraid of the Great Man. A quarter of an hour from the kraals they stood, while the king went in. He spoke for a long time with the prophet and when he came back, one could read the annoyance on his face.
The source is clearly well-informed and he makes three references in the male gender – sanusi, Great Man, and prophet – which must refer to Mhlakaza rather than Nongqawuse. Beyond the Gxarha itself, it is only when things go wrong that Mhlakaza even mentions his niece, as for example:
Umhlakaza denies being a prophet, and lays all blame to his daughter.
The prophet says that not he, but his daughter is responsible for what is going on.
Umhlakaza has no further communications with the new people, but his niece Nonquase … is still the medium of communication, and though no sound is heard in answer to the questions put, she gives forth the responses of the oracle.
Nonqawuse’s mental state can perhaps be inferred by the evidence relating to her interactions with Nombanda. The three pieces of evidence have already been cited: (a) the evidence of the police informer that Nongqawuse had ‘a silly look’ and appeared ‘not right in her mind’; (b) the statement by Nongqawuse under interrogation that she ‘became ill’ whereafter Nombanda spoke on her behalf; (c) the statement by Mjuza that Nombanda was more popular than Nongqawuse, and better liked by the chiefs. Taken together, these three pieces of evidence suggest to me a girl on the edge, a girl whose visions were genuine and not simulated, who therefore cracked under pressure and was supplanted by a more fluent surrogate.
In conclusion, I would argue that the roles of Nongqawuse and Mhlakaza were complementary, each performing a different but equally necessary function. Nongqawuse was the visionary, through her youth and purity the chosen recipient of the divine message. But her youth, her gender and above all her affliction made it impossible for her to direct the movement she had initiated. It was her uncle Mhlakaza who played the role of organiser. He brought her visions to the attention of the political leadership, he acted as the channel of communication and he instructed the Xhosa nation in the wishes of the new people. But he could not validate the prophecies by showing the new people to the enquirers. That was the task of Nongqawuse and her pure, youthful entourage. Moreover whenever the promised resurrection failed to materialise, it was only the inspired one, Nongqawuse, who could show the way forward. Thus it was Nongqawuse, not Mhlakaza, who salvaged the movement after the First Disappointment by saying that it was not sufficient to sell the cattle, the cattle must be slaughtered so
that their souls could ascend to heaven [Ch. 4 (1)]. But as the movement spiralled towards its inevitable catastrophe, Nongqawuse began to unravel. She was succeeded by Nombanda, who was articulate but devoid of inspiration, and Mhlakaza started to lay blame on his niece in order to exculpate himself.
Feminist critiques
The first call for a more gendered analysis came from Jeff Guy, a male historian with a long-standing commitment to gender issues in the context of precolonial African societies. Guy was heavily critical of my decision to label the movement as a ‘Cattle-Killing’, and to emphasise the cattle-killing injunction above all the other instructions of Nongqawuse’s strangers. Guy feels that it was the ban on cultivation rather than the killing of the cattle ‘which turned deprivation into catastrophe’.14 My preoccupation with cattle-killing, according to Guy, is indicative of my failure to grasp the ‘essential social dynamic of Xhosa society’, that is the way in which men subordinated women through their control of cattle.
Cattle were male objects, they could not be owned by women … Women worked in agriculture … Cattle in the male world subordinated women and the agricultural world.
Might it not be the case, Guy argues, that power relations in Xhosa society had shifted significantly even before the prophecies? Surely male authority had been weakened by the loss of cattle through war and lungsickness. Was not the movement perhaps an attack by women on weakened male structures?
In response, I have to admit that the term ‘Cattle-Killing’ was quite possibly adopted without sufficient reflection on my part. I was trying to find a more acceptable substitute for the previously current term, the ‘National Suicide of the Xhosa’. ‘Cattle-Killing’ was good enough for WW Gqoba who had titled his account Isizatu sokuXelwa kweNkomo ngoNongqause [‘The reason for the Cattle-Killing by Nongqawuse’], and it seemed good enough for me too. In deciding whether or not to retain the term, however, there are two things which need to be considered. First, whether it is true that cattle represent male domination whereas agriculture represents the world of women. Second, whether it is legitimate to highlight the killing of cattle above Nongqawuse’s other injunctions.
In considering the first aspect, one needs to begin by acknowledging that nineteenth-century Xhosa society was intensely patriarchal from any gender perspective. Men were privileged above women politically, socially and economically. Women were not allowed to participate in political and community gatherings or to participate on equal terms at feasts and beerdrinks, they were not allowed to sit in the same part of the dwelling where men sat, and they were not even permitted to speak aloud any word, however common, which contained a syllable of the name of their chief or their father-in-law. Since the entire society was characterised by patriarchal relations, it was only natural that patriarchal relations also entered into the sphere of cattle, which were central to religion, economy and social relations generally. Within this overall context, however, Guy is simply not correct in claiming that cattle ‘could not be owned by women’. When a Xhosa woman set off to be married she took three cattle with her to the place of her new husband.15 Only one of these cattle was intended for the husband, and this was slaughtered in the course of the ceremony. The inqakwe beast was a milk-bearing heifer, intended to provide her and her children with their personal milk. The inkomo yobulunga was a spiritual reminder of her own people and her natal home. She wore a necklace of its hair around her neck. The inqakwe or the inkomo yobulunga were recognised as the woman’s personal property, and they could not be demanded by her husband or her chief for any reason whatsoever. Moreover, the cows of the marital homestead were the property of the wife as well as the husband, the sustenance of herself and her children, as symbolised in a little ceremony which marks the end of the wedding festivities. The bride is presented with a small milk-basket by the men of her husband’s family. They tell her that she is now entitled to drink the milk of her husband’s home. She takes a mouthful, then spits the rest onto some cowdung from her husband’s cattle kraal. The entire point of this ceremony is to demonstrate that the cattle of the husband now belong to the wife as well.
Just as cattle were not the exclusive preserve of the Xhosa male, so too the gardens were not the exclusive preserve of the Xhosa female. It was the male chiefs, not the female agriculturalists who initiated the ban on cultivation. Notwithstanding that most agricultural work was done by women, certain aspects such as the fencing of the gardens were always done by men. There was no taboo or religious prohibition against men working the soil, and we may be sure that many did so. It is sufficient here to recall the case of Yekiwe, who returned disappointed from his visit to the Gxarha (p.115):
Having thus satisfied himself that all was false … whatever others might do or say, he would stay quietly at his kraal, and cultivate his gardens, and he advised his friends to do likewise.
What privileges the killing of the cattle over the destruction of maize in any analysis of the prophetic movement is the central role played by cattle in Xhosa thought and symbolism. Guy may be quite correct to point out that maize was also earmarked for destruction by the prophecies, and that it was maize rather than meat which was the staple of the Xhosa daily meal. He may even be right to point out that, in terms of the actual starvation, ‘it was the cessation of cultivation which ultimately destroyed the society, not the killing of cattle’. But maize does not have a soul, it does not cry aloud to the ancestors as cattle do (see pp.124-5). The cattle-killing was, after all, a religious movement expressed in religious terms, and it was the destruction of the cattle, not of anything else, which gave the movement its unique and distinctive character.
Guy’s arguments were taken up and greatly amplified by Helen Bradford, a respected historian and feminist, who regards the term ‘cattle-killing’ as ‘androcentric’ and ‘trivialising’ female labour.16 Bradford’s critique is part of a much broader enterprise, which is to show that the marginalisation of women and the neglect of women has seriously distorted our understanding of the South African past, not only at the level of analysis and interpretation but at the empirical level as well. She supports her argument by a detailed reinterpretation of two historical events, of which the Xhosa cattle-killing is one. Bradford certainly makes several important points – concerning the impact of cattle losses on the regulation of sexuality, for example, – which enhance the interpretation put forward in The Dead Will Arise and are fully consistent with the book as a whole.
But enhancing The Dead Will Arise is far from Bradford’s thoughts. Bradford’s critique is the fiercest, most detailed and most fundamental challenge which the book has faced so far. It challenges not only my analysis of the cattle-killing movement, but the accuracy of my empirical presentation and my personal integrity as a historian and a human being. Leaving aside the waspish comments which pepper Bradford’s text17, let me try to summarise her argument as fairly as possible.
Bradford’s basic accusation is that I have taken what she considers to be ‘a central woman … event’ and handed it over to men. This accusation is not meant to be personal; Bradford stresses that it is common to all male historians depending on predominantly male sources. Since I am a male historian, however, I am forced to carry the can for all the others as well. More specifically, Bradford accuses me of placing ‘a black man [Mhlakaza] … centre-stage’, of marginalising Nongqawuse and awarding ‘her words and historical significance to a man’. It is wrong to misrepresent Nongqawuse as confused, dishevelled and infantile whereas the true Nongqawuse was ‘an extremely independent adolescent, almost certainly an intombi’. The ‘gender imperialism’ of these misrepresentations is so extreme that they can only be explained by ‘the strength of Nongqawuse’s challenge to patriarchal power’.
Not only did [Nongqawuse] denounce male sexual offences. She also urged women to cease cultivation. She predicated a new order where female labour would be unnecessary. She declined to talk to powerful men beseeching her to p
roduce the new people; she told some to go home, or threatened them with death, or ordered them first to destroy the cattle associated with male power over women. Not surprisingly, many chiefs disliked her, and one tried to beat her up. Rather than this being interpreted as gender conflict, an unruly woman has suffered the same fate as other proto-feminists.
Nongqawuse’s ‘original contribution to the innumerable millenarian prophecies … apparently centred around promiscuous men engaging in sex that defiled them and animals [cattle] linked to female reproductive capacities’. Nongqawuse displayed ‘the behavioural patterns of many women subjected to sexual abuse’, in fact she displayed ‘frighteningly similar patterns of behaviour to incest survivors elsewhere, in societies where incest refers to immediate family members’. If therefore she is described by a police informer as ‘not besmeared with clay, nor did she seem … to take any pains with her appearance’, this is not because ‘she was not right in her mind’ (interpretation of the – Xhosa male – informer) but because she deliberately ‘ensured that she was not sexually attractive to Xhosa men’ (interpretation of H Bradford).
It is important to emphasise that, in putting forward this radical feminist interpretation, Bradford does not simply take the commonly agreed facts and put a different spin on them. There are no commonly agreed facts in this case, and Bradford quite correctly takes the fight straight to the heart of the primary evidence. It is thus entirely possible to rebut Bradford by taking another look at the evidence she has used, and this I think I must do, not merely in defence of my book or my gender, but because I honestly believe her to be wrong.