by Peires, Jeff
[The Xhosa] appeared to be much afraid of losing their corn and said that if we would spare their corn they would do all they could to persuade Sandilli to surrender on the 29th at 8 o’clock a.m. There being no sign of Sandilli we commenced to cut down their corn, the [Xhosa] begging on us to desist and give them some time, but no, they should either surrender at once or we would not spare their crops … On the 1st February halted all day being Sunday and had divine service and washed our clothes according to instructions, we [then] marched on Patrole for the purpose of cutting all the fine vallies from the Cabousie Neck and the Thomas-Dohne mountains to the Goula valley.30
The destruction of the crops on the Amathole began in early January 1852 and continued to the end of February when, the Amathole being laid waste, a start was made on Siyolo’s country further south. It took only one morning to cut down about 150 acres of beautiful corn, some of it growing up to two metres high.31 As the extracts above show, the prospect of total starvation in 1852 following the partial starvation of 1851 absolutely terrified the Xhosa. They made a concerted effort to arrange a peace before the 1852 autumn harvest, getting as far as a temporary cease-fire and formal peace proposals. But Smith would accept nothing short of unconditional surrender to the clemency of Her Majesty, and the Xhosa were not yet sufficiently reduced to consider that doubtful prospect.32 The departure of Governor Smith and the shipwreck of the Birkenhead which drowned 358 British soldiers bound for Xhosaland revived the Xhosa will to fight on, and the arrival of the new Governor, Sir George Cathcart, was greeted by a renewed crescendo of violence. Xhosa capacity to resist was, however, badly depleted, a shortage of basic foodstuffs replacing the shortage of firearms as their most acute problem. Significantly, their clandestine efforts were now as much concerned with smuggling corn as they had previously been with smuggling ammunition. As early as October 1851, the Xhosa had been raiding the abandoned camps of their British enemies in the hope of picking up the old bones and offal that the soldiers had discarded. Nine months later they were foraging for old bits of cowhide and leather bags to eat. In the Fish River bush they hunted tortoises. From July 1852 came reports of Xhosa fighters dead of actual starvation.33 Those women and children who survived the final battle of the Waterkloof in September 1852 were little better off.
All were in a most wretched state of emaciation and weakness, having been nearly starved for want of food, and subsisting entirely on leaves, roots and berries; their arms and legs were more like black sticks than human limbs.34
The British policy of starvation was not unconnected with the progressive dehumanisation of both sides in the course of the bloody and bitter conflict. During the early stages of the war, both settlers and Xhosa had shown some recognition of their common humanity. The Xhosa released settler women and children during the Christmas Day massacre of the military villages, and continued to do so throughout the war. They also spared the life of an old white farmer named Wallace ‘as he was doing them no harm’. The settlers of Fort Beaufort tended the wounds of the Xhosa injured during Chief Hermanus’s abortive attacks on their town.35 Lieutenant Bramston of the Rifle Brigade who usually called the Xhosa ‘brutes’, once referred to them as ‘fine fellows, who are only fighting for their country as we would do in their place’. Thomas Stubbs, a settler volunteer who took no prisoners, was not incapable of reflecting on the sadness of it all.
It is far from being pleasant to command a waylaying party. You there sit. You hear them coming on, perhaps humming a tune. You see them and almost look in their eyes and you have to give the signal for their death warrant. I have heard people talk very lightly about shooting [Xhosa], but I believe it is by those who have never experienced it. For I have always felt grieved that my duty compelled me to it. You certainly don’t think much about it after the first shot is fired. But before that, and after the excitement is over is the time any man must feel it.36
Such finer feelings did not long survive the savagery of war. The Xhosa had two magical theories which greatly disturbed the minds of the British soldiers who witnessed their effects. They believed that war medicines generated supernatural forces (iqungu) within the stomach of a soldier. If he was killed, the iqungu attacked his slayer, bloating and swelling up his body until he too died. To dissipate the iqungu of the British soldiers they killed and to free themselves from the danger of this posthumous revenge, the Xhosa ripped open the stomachs of their dead enemies.37 Furthermore, certain parts of the body were believed to have magical properties which could be used to strengthen their possessors. The liver, for instance, was held to be seat of bravery and courage, and the skull could be used as a cup for the preparation of war medicines. That is why the heads of certain settlers were sent to Mlanjeni.38 The sight of their dead comrades, usually disembowelled and sometimes decapitated, roused the British soldiers to a pitch of fury. They buried their dead at night and refrained from firing the traditional final volley over their unmarked graves; nevertheless, they often found on returning to the spot that the graves had been found, opened and rifled. British soldiers who fell alive into Xhosa hands suffered the tortures usually reserved for suspected witches, such as being slowly roasted to death on red-hot stones. Lurid stories of revolting cruelties, which have no precedent in Xhosa religion or custom – involving, for instance, the severance of living limbs and the tearing off of living flesh – were widely circulated and generally believed among the British forces.39
Atrocities breed atrocities, and it would be wrong for the historian to pass judgement on those who killed and tortured in this most merciless of all frontier wars. Our sources, which are mainly colonial, do not give us graphic details of colonial misdeeds. At most, they leave us with the dark hints implicit, for instance, in this Highland sergeant’s fine evocation of the emotions of a British soldier going into battle.
Nervousness gives place to excitement, excitement to anger; and anger may be supplanted by barbarism as an infuriated soldiery rush on, heedless of their doom. Their only thought is of victory; and when victory is gained, it requires a masterly general to restrain the men from deeds which cannot be named.40
The spirit of scientific enquiry, that glory of the Victorian age, produced grisly consequences in the context of frontier warfare as Stephen Lakeman, a gentleman-adventurer who raised a corps to fight in the Waterkloof for his own private amusement, records.
Doctor A – of the 60th had asked my men to procure for him a few native skulls of both sexes. This was a task easily accomplished. One morning they brought back to camp about two dozen heads of various ages. As these were not supposed to be in a presentable state for the doctor’s acceptance, the next night they turned my vat into a cauldron for the removal of superfluous flesh. And there these men sat, gravely smoking their pipes during the live-long night, and stirring round and round the heads in that seething boiler, as though they were cooking black-apple dumplings.41
This is not the only recorded case of the boiling off of human skulls by colonists, which is probably related to the widespread mutilation of Xhosa bodies to provide British soldiers with souvenirs, a feature of Harry Smith’s earlier war in Xhosaland.42
Yet, when all is said and done, these individual atrocities, which are perhaps inevitable in a war, were insignificant by comparison with the generalised incapacity of the white soldier to regard his Xhosa enemy as a fellow human being. This is quite apparent in the following letter home from a young Lancer.
But I could feel no compunction, do you know my dear Mother in shooting a [Xhosa] and yet I could not shoot a dog without feeling some pity, and yet I could feel none for this [Xhosa]. I have got his assegais and I began to cut off his necklace but it was all Bloody.43
The same 19-year-old wrote later that ‘there is no honour or glory for anything you do out here. You have only to drive cattle and kill [Xhosa] which is like killing rats and mice, only not quite so easy.’ And yet his letters home show quite clearly that in ev
ery other respect, this officer was a thoroughly decent and sensitive young man. The almost dream-like quality of mass slaughter is clearly demonstrated in the following reminiscence of a colonial volunteer.
[The Xhosa] rose and letting their cloaks fall to the ground, started off at a gentle run towards some thick bush about a mile distant. They made no stand and offered no resistance, neither did they beg for mercy or show any fear, but kept on at a steady pace while our people rode up to them and shot them down.44
In such an atmosphere, the taking of live prisoners became a rarity. The colonial sources are dotted with references to Xhosa shot dead while asleep or feigning death, or burned alive in their dwellings.45 On at least one occasion, Eyre explicitly told his subordinates that ‘There was to be no quarter. All that were taken alive were to be hanged at the two gateways.’ Settler Commandant Stubbs reprimanded one of his men for saving a prisoner’s life, and told him to ‘consider himself disgraced by taking a prisoner as he knew it was against orders’. Colonel Perceval, the British Commander, then intervened personally and gave the settlers to understand that they should shoot the prisoner.46 The black auxiliaries of the colonial forces were even more ruthless in their attitude to the enemy. On one occasion, they ‘hung [a captured Khoi rebel] on a yellowwood tree and practised throwing assegais at him until he was dead’. On several occasions British officers had to hold back auxiliaries who argued, ‘No more women, no more Amakosa,’ and sometimes they did not bother.
We were above on the edge of the krantz and the howling and yelling were fearful at that time. After all, the women were nearly as bad as the men …47
Settler volunteers marched about with the word ‘Extermination’ written on their hats, and Lakeman referred to members of his volunteer corps as ‘brutally cruel … killing without mercy all that came in their way when engaged in a fight, young as well as old, even braining little children’.48
Cathcart, the new Governor, fancied himself a liberal49 but he was very much the beneficiary of the brutal tactics pioneered by Eyre and permitted by Sir Harry Smith in the hope that final victory would soften the disgrace of his recall. In deliberate contrast to Smith’s plebeian origins and populist style, Cathcart consciously played the aristocrat, holding himself aloof and coldly correct. His dandified appearance was highlighted by a pair of hip-high leather boots which he wore so incessantly that it was rumoured that he went to bed in them. The battle-hardened soldiers, who deeply resented Cathcart’s contemptuous manner, called him ‘Old Boots’ behind his back and despised the elderly and inexperienced officers he had brought out from England. Eyre could not get along with Cathcart at all, and soon applied for sick leave.
The Xhosa hoped that the new Governor would bring a change of policy, but Cathcart’s initial war aims remained identical to those of Smith, namely that Sandile’s Xhosa should be permanently expelled from the Amathole Mountains and chased across the Kei River beyond the bounds of British territory.50 When the Xhosa realised this, they intensified their efforts and the months of March and April 1852 were hot ones for Sir George. But Cathcart had brought with him from England immense quantities of men and munitions supplied in generous profusion by a War Office anxious to give the new Governor all the tools he needed to finish the job. With these new resources, unavailable to Sir Harry Smith, Cathcart was able to build three strong new posts in strategic positions in the Amathole, the Waterkloof and Siyolo’s country.
Cathcart’s methods and policies were not significantly different from Smith’s, and his vastly increased military means more than offset his practical inexperience.51 Since the Xhosa and the Khoi rebels were half-starved and almost totally lacking in arms and ammunition, Cathcart’s delays and hesitations were probably as effective as a more active policy might have been. The coup de grace was administered, appropriately enough, by Colonel Eyre who returned from leave in October 1852 with what one officer termed ‘a raving commission’. ‘Conflagration announced his course over the hills, and in the evening he rode into the camp with Armstrong’s horse, cheered by the men.’ To his already brutal and ruthless mode of fighting, he now added the extra refinement of scavenging for the bodies of dead Xhosa and then hanging the corpses up on the trees.
The 73rd went some of them a little way down among the rocks and shot two [Xhosa] and hung these [Xhosa] in the trees as a warning to all who might pass that way, and took fifty women and children prisoners, and then we went down driving the prisoners in front like beasts, some in a wretched condition …
[The black auxiliaries of the colonial army] kept up a good fire through all the kloofs and effectually cleared it. They shot several [Xhosa] men, women and children and took women and children prisoners, but they shot more than half of them before we got down the hill.52
The final assault on the Waterkloof was less like a battle than a triumphal procession through a charnel house or even, perhaps, a Calvary.
We saw two [Xhosa] hanging in the trees, just been shot as the blood was trickling from the forehead.
The place stunk horribly from the bodies of the dead [Xhosa] that were lying about.
As we ascended the evidences of the fight became more frequent; rolling skulls, dislodged by those in front, came bounding down between our legs; the bones lay thick among the loose stones in the sluits and gulleys, and the bush on either side showed many a bleaching skeleton. A fine specimen of a [Xhosa] head, I took the liberty of putting into my saddle-bag, and afterwards brought it home with me to Scotland, where it has been much admired by phrenologists for its fine development.53
Although the fighting was virtually over, the Ngqika Xhosa chiefs stubbornly refused to surrender unconditionally or to flee their country. They hid themselves in the vast expanses of the Amathole Mountains, and their very fewness in number enabled them to avoid both starvation and capture. The majority of their followers and their cattle found safe refuge in the territory of the Ndlambe Xhosa chief Mhala, who had maintained a nominal neutrality, but had exerted himself to the utmost to sustain his Ngqika brethren. Despite the urging of the settlers, Cathcart hesitated to attack Mhala and thus open a new front in a war he wanted to end before the grouse-shooting season began.54
The impasse was broken by a wholly unexpected factor. Not content with starting a war in the eastern Cape, Sir Harry Smith had annexed the Boer territory north of the Orange River and thus embroiled himself in the Boer quarrel with Moshoeshoe, King of Lesotho. After the final clearing of the Waterkloof, Cathcart marched north with 2 500 men expecting to intimidate Moshoeshoe into paying a fine of 10 000 cattle and 1 000 horses. The Sotho ruler declared that ‘there was not such a number of cattle and horses … in the whole of his territory’. Cathcart insisted and threatened until Moshoeshoe rose and said, ‘Well, Your Excellency, you know that when a dog is kicked, he generally turns and bites.’55 At the battle of Berea (December 1852), Moshoeshoe’s Sotho cavalry overwhelmed the far smaller British force which had never previously faced such an enemy. Only a daring counter-thrust halfway up a steep mountain by the Light Company of Eyre’s 73rd Regiment saved Cathcart’s army from a humiliatimg defeat. (The 73rd had already made their presence felt north of the Orange by massacring some 25 Sotho women and children and, the Sotho alleged, raping a number of women.)56 The smell of failure now hung heavily over Cathcart and he found himself staring into the same black pit of disgrace that had swallowed Sir Harry Smith. Less honest but more cunning than Sir Harry, he hastily claimed victory in Lesotho, and then returned to British Kaffraria to claim another unearned victory over the battered but still defiant Xhosa chiefs.
It will be recalled that Cathcart, like Smith, had proclaimed his intention of chasing the Ngqika Xhosa across the Kei and hence beyond the bounds of British territory. To the horror and indignation of the settler press, Cathcart devised a little charade which would enable him to claim peace with honour. The Xhosa chiefs crossed the Kei at the Governor’s command, but onl
y for a short while and only on the clear understanding that they would be allowed to return to British Kaffraria as soon as Cathcart had spoken to them.57 The meeting (2 March 1853) lasted only half an hour and Cathcart never dismounted from his horse, but at least he did not ask the chiefs to touch the stick of peace or kiss his boots. Eyre set off for the Crimean War, promising ‘to be more civilised than he was in Africa’.58 An estimated 16 000 Xhosa had died, together with 1 400 on the colonial side.59 The War of Mlanjeni was over.
The verbal agreements which Cathcart made with the chiefs were neither signed nor minuted,60 but it is clear that the Xhosa made peace on the basis of two quite mistaken assumptions. Although Cathcart had informed them that they would not be permitted to return to their native lands in the Amathole Mountains, the chiefs regarded this stipulation as a mere stepping-stone on the way to a more genuine peace. They therefore set great store by Cathcart’s promise that the land question would be settled by an appeal to the Queen.61 Cathcart knew, as the chiefs did not, that this was a mere formality and that there was no real possibilty of his decisions being queried in London. And so, without waiting for the results of the appeal, on which the Xhosa laid such great emphasis, Cathcart immediately set about re-allocating the captured territories of the horrified Xhosa. The Amathole district was renamed the Crown Reserve, and set aside for mixed settler/Mfengu occupation. Any Xhosa found in the Crown Reserve was liable to a court martial.62 The border lands from the Crown Reserve down to the sea were parcelled out to chiefs of proven loyalty such as Kama and Toyise, partly as a reward and partly as a buffer between the Colony and the dispossessed Ngqika Xhosa, who were confined to a small and infertile reserve between the Amathole and the Kei River. The Ngqika Xhosa protested loudly against the occupation of their country by outsiders but were fobbed off with promises that Cathcart’s successor would decide the matter.63
