by Peires, Jeff
Mlanjeni venerated the sun; he prayed to it and taught his followers to do likewise.
When we were there, he [Mlanjeni] sat turned towards the sun and prayed to it. He teaches that the sun is God, and when the sun’s rays break through the clouds that these are God’s twigs … At night God puts his cloak over us, this is the darkness. The stars are his dogs …3
Mlanjeni led the people to believe through vague insinuations and enigmatic utterances that some great event was about to reveal itself, though he did not say exactly what it was or how exactly it would occur. In order to bring this event to fruition, however, it was first necessary to rid the world of the ubuthi (evil substance) which was poisoning the earth all around. It was on account of this ubuthi that the great drought of 1850 was burning up the country, that the baking land refused the plough, that the cattle were like skeletons from lack of grass, and that the people themselves were suffering grievously from hunger. He, Mlanjeni, was divinely appointed to purify and cleanse and to destroy ubuthi, which was often secretly used by the Xhosa to help them find good fortune and to protect them from their enemies. ‘The land is full of ubuthi!’ cried Mlanjeni. ‘This is the cause of so much disease and death among both men and cattle; let all cast it away, and come to me to be cleansed.’4
Outside his father’s dwelling, Mlanjeni erected two witchcraft poles, standing as a gateway. People who wished to remove the suspicion of witchcraft walked between these poles. The innocent emerged unscathed but those who felt themselves guilty were overcome with weakness and fear as they approached. They stuck fast as if paralysed, while Mlanjeni shook and twitched and danced as well as he could. The large crowds who gathered at Kala’s place – for nothing like this had ever been seen in Xhosaland before – shouted, ‘He is fixed! He is fixed!’ and then, while the witch writhed on the spot quite unable to move, the people would shout, ‘Get out! Get out! Bolowane!’ to drive the witchcraft out of its victim.5 Eventually the witch, thus purged of his or her witchcraft, staggered through the poles to Mlanjeni who gave him a small twig of the plumbago bush to protect him and keep him pure of evil. For Mlanjeni gave orders that no person was to be harmed for being a witch, since witchcraft was not a personal quality but an evil affliction which he had the god-given power to cure.
Word spread throughout Xhosaland as far as the Great Place of King Sarhili beyond the borders of British Kaffraria that any Xhosa ‘having poisonous roots, all means of witchcraft, baboons [witchcraft familiars] or charms’ must immediately dispose of them. In those days there was constant whispering in the homesteads concerning particular individuals suspected of evil practices, and such persons were usually glad to visit Mlanjeni to clear themselves of dangerous rumours. Everywhere people burned their charms and medicines and threw the ashes into the rivers, to the delight of themselves and their neighbours. For everyone felt in danger of being bewitched by enemies, and thus even the most innocent maintained a private arsenal of protective devices. But now that Mlanjeni, through his extraordinary powers and his witchcraft poles, had identified and disarmed the witches, there was no longer any need for anyone to dabble secretly with bewitching medicines. Freed of tension, suspicion and malicious gossip for the first time in many years, the Xhosa relaxed in an atmosphere of peace and security, waiting for the next revelation from Mlanjeni.
Rumours of the Riverman’s power grew in the telling. ‘He lights his pipe on the sun,’ it was said; ‘he heals the sick, makes the blind see, the lame walk, and the dumb speak.’ When he danced, the drops of sweat falling from his body would cause the rain to fall.6 The further away the people lived, the greater the miracles they attributed to Mlanjeni, as this report from the Phuti in the foothills of the Drakensberg shows.
He commands the star of the morning to descend from the heavens to place itself on his forehead, and it obeys; he orders the earth to shake on its foundations, and the rocks and the mountains bow and tremble before him; he strikes the sun with his enchanted spear, and he becomes in turn a hare, a hyena or any other beast he desires; he sows the seeds of corn with his hands, he conjures them to germinate and grow in an instant, and these seeds germinate thus, shooting out green stems and developing before one’s eyes.7
The sun itself, his followers said, descended from heaven to touch Mlanjeni’s head and passed through his body to his feet from which it arose again to appear with new brilliance in the east. And everywhere the believers saluted its rising by shouting ‘He appears! He appears! Mlanjeni! Our chief!’ Children exclaimed that Mlanjeni was the ‘True Lord’ while their parents remarked that the black man was rich by comparison with the white for, by contrast with the dead God of the missionaries, the black man’s god still lived and visibly manifested his power by miracles every day.
The greatest miracle was still to come. For since the Xhosa believed that all evil, sickness and death was caused by witchcraft, and since they also believed that Mlanjeni was endowed with the power to eradicate all witchcrafts whatsoever, they therefore believed that the Riverman was possessed of the ‘secret of Eternity’ and could conquer death itself.8
1 For Mlanjeni, see especially ‘Nzulu Lwazi’ (SEK Mqhayi), ‘URev Tiyo Soga, uTshaka noMlanjeni’, Umteteli waBantu, 17 Dec. 1927; letter from Bryce Ross, 19 Dec. 1851, Home and Foreign Record of the Free Church of Scotland, 11(1851-2), pp.267-8; A Kropf (1891), pp.6-7; Imperial Blue Book 1334 of 1851, G Mackinnon-H Smith, 30 Sept. 1850 and enclosures, pp.15-19; Grahamstown Journal, 21 July 1855.
2 On Nxele, see Peires (1981), Ch. V and, especially, South African Library, Cape Town, Grey Collection, MS 172c, ‘Kaffir legends and history’ by WK Kaye. For examples of sightings of Nxele after his death, see Grahamstown Journal, 4 Aug. 1842, Cape Frontier Times, 5 Jan. 1843.
3 Berlin Missionberichte, May 1851, p.81. Mlanjeni’s emphasis on the sun is without precedent in Xhosa religion and was not taken up in subsequent Xhosa religious movements. It might support the contention of Bryce Ross (see Note 1 above) that Mlanjeni learned some of his ideas as a boy from emancipated slaves. On the other hand, it is possible that Mlanjeni’s emphasis on the sun is a consequence of the felt need of the Xhosa of this time to have a ‘high God’ of their own. Cf. R Horton (1967).
4 Bryce Ross, p.267.
5 Quoted from ’Nzulu Lwazi’. The term Bolowane’ presents some problems. I initially thought that it referred to the sacred herd of cattle among the Bomvana called ‘Bolowane’ cattle. But it seems (PAW Cook (n.d.), p.122) that this herd only became sacred after the Bomvana (who were nominally subject to King Sarhili) refused to sacrifice them at Mlanjeni’s orders. JH Soga identifies ‘Bolowane’ as another name for the mimosa tree (quoted in GD Ross, ‘Sacrificial cattle’, typescript, ‘Butterworth, 10 Nov. 1924, copy in author’s possession). It would seem therefore that the exclamation ‘Bolowane!’ is in some way connected with Mlanjeni’s witchcraft poles, although the mimosa has no magical associations as far as I can ascertain.
6 Interview with W Dwaba, Tshabo Location, Berlin District, Aug. 1975.
7 These reports of distant rumours concerning Mlanjeni come from the detailed letters of the French missionaries. C Schrumpf-P.E.M.S., 13 Feb. 1851, T Arbousset-P.E.M.S., April 1851, Journal des Missions Evangeliques, XXVI (1851), pp.168-176, 322-4. It might be argued that beliefs concerning Mlanjeni in the Sotho-speaking area might be very different to ideas in the Xhosa-language area, but it is clear from the letters that the Sotho leaders were in close touch with Xhosaland. The Phuti were the immediate neighbours of the Xhosa-speaking Thembu, who were strong believers in Mlanjeni.
8 Kropf (1891), p.6. Among the Phuti (Note 7), it was believed that Mlanjeni had already resurrected some of the dead.
2. A SURPRISE FOR SIR HARRY SMITH
The War of the Axe, a war fought essentially over the attempts of the Cape Colony government to abrogate a treaty it had freely signed some
ten years previously, was brought to an end late in 1847 by an appropriately shabby trick.1 Sandile, the senior Xhosa chief on the Cape frontier, was persuaded to enter the camp of the Rifle Brigade in order, so he thought, to negotiate a settlement of his grievances. Once inside he and his councillors were locked up in a small unheated room near the powder magazine, and warned that they would be fired on if they attempted to leave. Later they were transferred to an empty storeroom in Grahamstown, there to await the pleasure of the Governor and, incidentally, to entertain the elite of the Grahamstown settlers who vied for the opportunity to view the captive Xhosa chiefs. For the rest of his life, Sandile ‘never ceased to speak of this case as one of gross treachery’ and it left him with an abiding fear and suspicion of all things British.
While Sandile was languishing in confinement, a new Governor was arriving in Port Elizabeth. This was Sir Harry Smith, the hero of Georgette Heyer’s historical romance The Spanish Bride, and of many popular histories besides.2 Handsome, gallant and dashing, Sir Harry was the very embodiment of the romantic ideal of the Victorian soldier. His glorious triumph at Aliwal in India had brought him not only a knighthood, but a doctorate from Cambridge University, the favour of the Duke of Wellington and the personal admiration of Queen Victoria. He possessed, moreover, considerable South African experience, having commanded the Imperial troops against the Xhosa during the Sixth Frontier War (1834-5). As Governor of the short-lived (1835-6) ‘Province of Queen Adelaide’, Smith had attempted to turn the Xhosa hereditary chiefs into salaried magistrates, and to ‘civilize the Xhosa’ by means of schools, missions and trade in money. Sir Harry had a taste for ceremony and rhetoric, and an inflated respect for the power of his own personality. He called himself the Inkosi Inkhulu (Great Chief), he referred to the Xhosa chiefs as his ‘children’, and he enjoyed holding Great Meetings at which he employed gold-topped sticks and other theatrical props to impress his ideas on a reluctant Xhosa audience. Imperial historians have tended to treat Smith’s flamboyant excesses with the indulgence due, perhaps, to his good intentions. But seen from the wrong side of his boots and his riding-crop, Sir Harry’s little pranks must have appeared very different. For the Xhosa, Smith’s hands were always red with the blood of their beloved King Hintsa, who had entered Smith’s camp in 1835 with full assurances of his personal safety and never left it alive.
Arriving in Port Elizabeth early in December 1847, Smith wasted no time in resuming his role as Inkosi Inkhulu, magnified a thousand times over by his vastly increased arrogance and importance. Among the many hundreds in the crowd who came to see him was his old adversary, the Xhosa chief Maqoma. Maqoma was the elder brother of Sandile but, through a complication of the Xhosa law of succession, his junior in rank. Incomparably the most brilliant and daring of the Xhosa generals, he had led the Xhosa forces which had fought Smith almost to a standstill back in 1835. Disillusioned with the failure of the colonial government to respect the treaties of that year, and embittered by the decline of his power after Sandile’s coming of age in 1842, Maqoma sank into an alcohol-induced stupor from which even the War of the Axe failed to arouse him. He put up a merely token resistance to the British forces and readily accepted the colonial government’s offer to keep him safely out of the way in Port Elizabeth for the duration of the war. Now this valiant Xhosa soldier, defeated more by his own failings than by the British army, was to become the first victim of Smith’s return.3 As soon as Smith saw Maqoma, he fixed him with an arrogant stare and half-drew his sword from its scabbard in a gesture of attack. Maqoma started back in surprise and the settler crowd laughed their approval of the Governor’s wit and determination. But Smith was not yet finished with Maqoma. Later that day, he sent for him to come to his hotel and there, again in the presence of witnesses, he publicly humiliated the fallen chief. After storming and ranting at him and refusing to shake his hand, Smith ordered Maqoma to his knees and, placing his gubernatorial boot on the chief’s neck, declared, ‘This is to teach you that I am come hither to show [Xhosaland] that I am chief and master here.’ Maqoma’s thoughts on this occasion have been recorded by oral tradition. ‘You are a dog [alluding to Smith’s low birth] and so you behave like a dog. This thing was not sent by Victoria who knows that I am of royal blood like herself.’ Smith was to pay dearly for his insult.
The public orgy of boot-licking which the Governor demanded from the helpless Xhosa had only begun. Proceeding from Port Elizabeth to Grahamstown, Smith confronted Sandile in his prison. Brandishing a gun, he demanded that Sandile tell him the name of the Great Chief of the Xhosa nation. Sandile, in his innocence, responded that his Great Chief was Sarhili, naming the acknowledged King of all the Xhosa, who lived beyond the bounds of British territory. Furious, Smith struck the floor with his gun and yelled out that he, Smith, was the Great Chief and the Xhosa were his dogs. Out of the goodness of his heart, but for no other reason, he was going to release Sandile. The chief offered to shake Smith’s hand but was told to kiss the Governor’s boot instead: the privilege of shaking hands would depend on his future conduct.
This done, Smith set off on a triumphal procession to King William’s Town, deliberately choosing a route that led through the most densely populated parts of Xhosaland to enable as many Xhosa as possible to see him and to kiss his foot. On arriving in King William’s Town, the capital of British Kaffraria, Smith held a Great Meeting for all the Xhosa chiefs and councillors. He made great play of two ‘staffs’ which he had specially devised for the purpose. The first – a common brass doorknob surmounted on a wooden tentpole – he called the ‘staff of peace’ and the other – an ornamental pike – he called the ‘staff of war’. The beaten Xhosa chiefs were called up one by one to the central spot where Smith sat on his horse and invited them to choose between the staff of peace and the staff of war. Not surprisingly they all chose the tentpole with the doorknob on the end. The Governor then held up a scrap of paper symbolising the Treaty of 1835, which the Xhosa still adhered to, and tore it up, shouting ‘No more treaties!’ The ceremony ended with the now familiar custom whereby the chiefs kissed Smith’s boot and shouted ‘Inkos’ Inkulu! Inkos’ Inkhulu!’
What Smith told the Xhosa in this and subsequent harangues was even more shattering and distressing than the humiliation inflicted by his arrogance. All the land between the Fish and the Keiskamma rivers, hitherto an integral part of Xhosaland, was to be annexed to the Cape Colony and given out to white settlers and the Mfengu, their African allies. The Xhosa were to be shepherded into the territory between the Keiskamma and the Great Kei rivers, now named British Kaffraria and ruled directly by the Governor and his appointees under martial law. The Governor, as Great Chief, was empowered to lay down whatever laws he liked in the cause of civilisation and enlightenment.
Smith was not short of ideas on this score. British Kaffraria was to be surveyed and divided into towns and counties bearing English names. Trade was to be encouraged, and the Xhosa were to learn the value of money and the dignity of labour by working on the roads or in the Colony. The root of all evil, Smith declared, was the Xhosa love of cattle, and these were to be replaced by sheep as soon as possible. The Native Commissioners, acting as magistrates, would prevent the chiefs confiscating the cattle of their people by means of judicial fines. Any civil disputes relating to cattle would result in the cattle in question being shot out of hand. Bridewealth payments (referred to as ‘the sin of buying wives’) were prohibited. Detection and prosecution of witches and sorcerers were forbidden on pain of death. And so on.4
Smith’s programme was far too ambitious to be practical and Colonel Mackinnon, his Lieutenant-Governor in British Kaffraria, was a nonentity and a coward, whose main preoccupation was to present his administration in as favourable a light as possible.5 Nevertheless, the Xhosa felt harshly oppressed by the new regime. Never before had they been subjected to direct colonial rule, and they could not reconcile themselves to the experience. Chiefs and people were bossed about
by alien officials whose decisions they were unable to question. They were cramped and restricted in strange territories, while their fertile land across the Keiskamma was occupied and desecrated by the white intruders. ‘The whole of the land of [my] forefathers is dotted with the white man’s houses and the white [surveyor’s] flags,’ exclaimed Sandile, adding that he would ‘rather die for his country than die without a cause’.6 Worst of all was the ban on witch-finding that, in the opinion of the Xhosa, gave the witches a free hand to work their nefarious magic and destroy the Xhosa nation from within. This explosion of witchcraft seemed to be the major cause of the terrible drought of 1850, the drought which called forth Mlanjeni the Riverman.
On 18 August 1850, the witch-finding activities of Mlanjeni were brought to the attention of the relevant colonial official, Commissioner John Maclean. Maclean immediately sent for Mlanjeni’s chief, Mqhayi, a man hitherto notable only for his dogged adherence to the British cause. To Maclean’s surprise, Mqhayi defended the practices of Mlanjeni, saying that the Riverman ‘was doing a great deal of good; that he was preaching what the English so often told them, that there must be no witchcraft and no murder’.7 Maclean was not convinced. He sent for Mlanjeni and his father Kala, and when they did not appear he dispatched a detachment of police to arrest them. The police found Mlanjeni too thin and exhausted to move, and gave him five days to shift to Chief Mqhayi’s Great Place, where Maclean could keep an eye on him. The Riverman failed to arrive and when the police returned they discovered that he had gone into hiding. But although the colonial authorities were unable to find Mlanjeni, his fellow-Xhosa had no such difficulty. Throughout August 1850, streams of messages passed to and fro between the people and the prophet, dispensing orders, charms, and judgements in witchcraft cases. The Riverman’s pronouncements were reported far beyond the boundaries of British Kaffraria, in Thembuland, in Lesotho and in the independent territory of Sarhili, King of all the Xhosa nation. Deep within the Cape Colony, Xhosa labourers working on white farms heard the call of Mlanjeni and returned to their ancestral homesteads to prepare for they knew not what.
