by Peires, Jeff
69 As recorded by L Graham in his diary for 24 June 1853. Acc 8402-5, National Army Museum.
70 Interview with M Soga, Kobonqaba Location, Kentani District, 25 Aug. 1983. The same point was mentioned by oral historian W Nkabi, interviewed Bulembo Location, King William’s Town District, 24 Aug. 1975. A letter by the Paris Missionary C Schrumpf, 1 June 1851, Journal des Missions Evangeliques, XXXVI (1851), pp.369-70 describes the aftermath of battle as follows: ‘At least (ten] blacks were killed, but the rest gave thanks to Mlanjeni for the victory. They do not worry about those who were killed, they say they must have neglected some part of the ceremony.’ For Mlanjeni’s excuses to Sandile, see Holdich Journal, Staffordshire Regimental Museum, 29 June 1851.
71 L Festinger, HW Riecken and S Schachter (1956).
72 Imperial Blue Book 1969 of 1855, G Cathcart-Duke of Newcastle, 3 Sept. 1853, p.14; Grahamstown Journal, 22 Oct. 1853; ‘Nzulu Lwazi’, ‘URev. Tiyo Soga uTshaka noMlanjeni’, Umteteli waBantu, 17 Dec. 1927.
4. GOLIATH
The violence and bloodshed of the Frontier Wars was paralleled by a huge spiritual upheaval which resulted from the clash of Xhosa and Christian religious ideas. Xhosa religion was primarily a this-worldly religion, more concerned with guiding people’s behaviour in the existing world than with abstract moral judgements or metaphysical speculations. The Xhosa had no priests as such; the Xhosa doctors (amagqirha) spent most of their time dealing with practical matters such as omens, medicines, witchcraft and the relationship between people and their ancestors. Ancestors were encountered mostly in terms of their earthly manifestations: they were believed to reward those who venerated them and to punish those guilty of neglect. Xhosa religion was closely associated with the other institutions of Xhosa society, a society which was ruled over by chiefs and dominated by cattle. It was not a static, unchanging world, but it was a world whose twists of fortune Xhosa religion was well adapted to explain and control.1
There was, however, something missing in Xhosa religion, a gap through which some of the central ideas of Christianity were able to infiltrate. Xhosa religion was deeply ambivalent about death, the most frightening of all human experiences, and the question of the afterlife. On the one hand, there was the feeling that the dead do not really die but remain with the living, that death is no more than a transition between the state of being human and the state of being an ancestor. It seems, for instance, that in very early times, the Xhosa dead were buried sitting or standing, accompanied by their weapons, their pipes and snuffboxes, and various other personal items which they would be needing in the afterworld.2 But on the other hand, there was a contrary feeling, nurtured by the normal human fear, that death was something evil and unnatural. This contrary feeling is still expressed in a well-known folktale, which relates that in the beginning God sent the chameleon to Man with the message that he would live forever. But the chameleon delayed on the road and was overtaken by the evil lizard, which delivered instead a message that Man would die.3 This tale reflects the instinctive feeling of most Xhosa that death was not part of God’s original plan, but the unintended result of evil intervention from outside. During the precolonial period, the Xhosa greeted the advent of death with absolute terror and, especially in the case of chiefs, they often responded to symptoms of a fatal illness by desperate witch-hunting.
The view of death as evil and unnatural was greatly reinforced in the middle of the eighteenth century by a terrible smallpox epidemic which struck Xhosaland about 1770. Before the epidemic, the Xhosa had buried their dead, but from that time they shrank from touching dead bodies and, as a result, the dying were carried outside and left to expire in the bush. People fled from the sight or sound of death, and in most cases the corpses were not recovered but left to the dogs and the hyenas.
No friendly voice is heard cheering them amidst the struggles of dissolving nature; no kindly helping hand is lent to turn them from side to side; nor have their sinking spirits any the least expectation of a deliverer … The moment the spark of life becomes extinct, and sometimes before, ‘ravening wolves around’ feed upon their remains unmolested. In many parts of the country, by continually preying on human flesh, these animals are rendered extraordinarily fierce and very dangerous.4
With the collapse of ordinary funeral rituals, any comforting thought the Xhosa may have had that death was a normal and natural transition to a more exalted state must have utterly vanished.
For this reason, the Christian message of the resurrection produced an immediate and lasting impression on all who heard it, although the Xhosa did not always understand it in exactly the way the missionaries intended, as this early account shows:
When … [the missionary James Read] told them that woman and all mankind would rise again from the dead, it caused uncommon joy among the [Xhosa]. They said they should like to see their grandfathers, and others whom they mentioned. Congo inquired when it would happen, and if it would be soon, but Mr Read could not gratify his wishes on that point.5
With very few exceptions indeed, the missionaries who propagated Christianity among the Xhosa did not follow up this initial advantage. Although their sincerity is not in question, the early missionaries were very much the products of the western European civilisation from which they sprang. They were horrified by what they saw as the moral shortcomings of Xhosa culture, such as polygamy, bridewealth, initiation, dress and the manner whereby the Xhosa detected witches. They were so determined to alter aspects of the Xhosa way of life which the people themselves considered natural and necessary that they completely alienated themselves from the mainstream of Xhosa society. They regarded colonial rule as a blessing to the heathen, and they did not attempt to formulate a teaching which might relieve the sufferings which the Xhosa experienced at the sharp end of that very colonialism. Although they never ceased to travel about the country and preach in the heathen dwellings, most of their attention was concentrated on the comparatively few residents of the mission stations. With the possible exception of Dr van der Kemp, the missionaries never comprehended much less tapped the vast spiritual longing which they themselves had awakened and which flourished despite, rather than because of, their efforts.
And yet the attraction of Christian ideas was manifested very early on by the appearance in Xhosaland of two extraordinary prophets whose doctrines were explicitly derived from Christianity. The first of these, Ntsikana (d. 1821), had only a marginal acquaintance with the missionaries and, appropriately for one who never personally experienced the rigours of colonialism, he preached a gospel of peace and praise. The second of these was Nxele (d. 1820), who has already been mentioned as a precursor of Mlanjeni. Nxele was brought up on a farm in the Cape Colony where he learned something of Christianity. He began to have religious visions when he was still quite young, and he came to believe that only the intervention of Christ saved him from being hanged as a madman. Later he spent many hours in conversation with the military chaplain in Grahamstown ‘to elicit information in regard to the doctrines of Christianity’.6 When the Reverend James Read visited Xhosaland in 1816 Nxele was already well established as a prophet and lived like a chief despite his humble origins. His teaching at this point, though not lacking in individuality, was mostly straightforward and orthodox. He taught of the creation, the fall of Man, the flood and the crucifixion, and he preached against witchcraft, violence and polygamy. The only unorthodox aspect of Nxele’s doctrine was ‘a most strange notion of his birth, as derived from the same mother as Christ’. Needless to say, the missionaries did not entertain for one moment Nxele’s ‘impious’ notion that he was the younger brother of Christ. Whether it was this rejection or whether it was the activities of the colonial government in support of their ally, the adulterous Ngqika (the father of Sandile), it is hard to say, but for whatever reason, Nxele turned sharply against mission Christianity and evolved a revolutionary new theology in which Mdalidephu, the God
of the blacks, was raised up in opposition to Thixo, the God of the whites. Christian ideas concerning the crucifixion of Christ and the resurrection of the dead were not abandoned, but were pressed into the service of the new doctrine which inspired the Xhosa during the Fifth Frontier War and was defeated with Nxele at the battle of Grahamstown in 1819.
The story of Nxele shows the extent to which Christian beliefs could feed the spiritual hunger of an exceptional man, but it shows also that such a man was unlikely to rest satisfied within the confines of mission-approved Christianity. We turn now to the story of another Xhosa, like Nxele a man whose religious imagination was fired by Christian teaching but frustrated by the harsh reality of his subordinate status in a colonial society.
In the settler city of Grahamstown this man went by the name of Wilhelm Goliath, but his real name was Mhlakaza.7 We know that his father, who was a councillor of Sarhili, killed his mother in a fit of anger, but we do not know when or why.8 Wilhelm must have spent several years working in the Colony, for he spoke fluent Dutch and was a baptised member of the Methodist Church in Grahamstown, where several of his relatives also lived. He was married by Christian rites to an Mfengu woman named Sarah.9 In June 1849, he became the personal servant of Nathaniel James Merriman, the newly appointed Archdeacon of Grahamstown. It was a relationship which was to change Wilhelm’s life, and the whole course of South African history with it. Merriman was newly arrived from England with the task of supervising the Anglican Church throughout the eastern division of the Cape Colony. His highly original manner of getting to know this vast domain was to walk the immense distances between the small country towns on foot, accompanied only by Wilhelm who carried his bag of clothes. Over a period of some 18 months, the two men walked all the way from Grahamstown to Graaff-Reinet, up to Colesberg and the Orange River, and eastwards to British Kaffraria where Merriman had thoughts of starting an Anglican mission. Often the archdeacon strode ahead while Wilhelm limped behind, and the master had some sharp things to say about the laziness and improvidence of his servant.10 Nevertheless, it seems as if this was an intensely happy period in Wilhelm’s life. Merriman was clearly very fond of Wilhelm and genuinely respected his ability to manage the country and its people. Together they shared the adventures of the road, and more than once they confronted together the suspicions and prejudices of white farmers who resented the intimate and near-equal relationship of the white man and the black. But the greatest joy for both Merriman and Wilhelm was the opportunity which their long walks afforded to talk religion, and the archdeacon’s journal paints a near-idyllic picture of two Christian comrades immersed together in the study of God’s Word.
Wilhelm and I as was our usual custom sometimes under the shade of the mimosa bush, sometimes in the dry channel of some river, sat and read together both in the [Xhosa] and the English Testaments, he trying to understand my language and I his.11
Often it must have seemed to Wilhelm that he was not a servant at all, but a partner in the great enterprise of spreading the Word of God. At some times, he sat up deep into the night talking Christianity with his fellow-blacks long after the archdeacon had retired to sleep. At other times, he delivered sermons in Xhosa to scoffing audiences, enduring the mockery and scorn of the heathen as best he could.12
Wilhelm Goliath was the first Xhosa ever to receive the Anglican communion, but he burned to become a full member of the Church. He despised the way the Methodist congregations ‘told their hearts’ in public, and he yearned for the private confessions, the beautiful robes and the old traditions of the Anglican Church. After some resistance Merriman granted him his wish, and in April 1850 Wilhelm became the first Xhosa to be confirmed as an Anglican. He could recite the creed, the Lord’s prayer, the ten commandments and most of the translated Anglican liturgy in Xhosa, and he was fairly well acquainted with most of the Bible. He was deeply hostile even to the most innocent Xhosa religious practices, and he once sternly reproved a young mother for telling her child to throw a stone into the river in order to propitiate the spirits who lived there. ‘[Wilhelm] is moreover, I believe, a good man,’ wrote Merriman. ‘I had great pleasure in taking him to be confirmed.’13
But all idylls come to an end. Merriman could not tramp the countryside forever, and his duties confined him increasingly to the white Anglican community of Grahamstown. In October 1850, the archdeacon dismissed his faithful servant ‘not a little thoughtfully and anxiously’, and his journal entry displays considerable embarrassment on the subject. ‘The expense of keeping him myself was becoming a serious consideration,’ he began somewhat speciously, ‘as the drought made living rather dear.’ Then he got to the point. ‘Moreover, I found naturally enough that the rest of my household did not think Wilhelm so well worth his keep as I did; and finding him regarded somewhat like the knights of King Lear … I dismissed him.’ The statement is vague, but its general purport is clear. In Shakespeare’s play, Lear’s daughters force the old man to get rid of his attendant knights who amuse him but distract and inconvenience the household. Wilhelm Goliath’s religious obsessions were all very well when the archdeacon was away and on the road, but they were a disturbance to Mrs Merriman’s domestic peace, and so he had to go.14
Merriman did not simply wash his hands of Wilhelm, but found him a position teaching at the Xhosa school in Southwell, a farming district not far from Grahamstown. But with the outbreak of the War of Mlanjeni, the Xhosa school in Southwell was closed down and Wilhelm re-entered Merriman’s personal service. It is not easy to piece together what happened next, for Wilhelm had clearly become a nuisance and ceased to occupy the same important and affectionate place he had formerly enjoyed in the archdeacon’s journals. It is clear however that Wilhelm became unwilling to perform the menial functions of a servant, and was consequently deprived of his wages. In his last mention of ‘poor Wilhelm’, Merriman refers to his erstwhile comrade as ‘having for some time continued too lazy to work’, and having for that reason ‘reduced himself’ to a ‘precarious subsistence’. One of Mrs Merriman’s letters echoes this theme. Wilhelm, she wrote, ‘was a [Xhosa] and did not like work – rather grew tired of it – and left us’.15
Wilhelm’s reluctance to labour was associated with the increasing intensity of his religious experiences. But his desire to share these experiences with fellow-Christians fell on stony ground among the Merrimans as Mrs Merriman herself indicated.
He [Wilhelm] was a dreamy man and I remember his once telling us about a vision that he had in connection with the spread of the Gospel … and I felt sorry I had laughed and made light of it.
The great desire of Wilhelm Goliath’s life, wrote Mrs Merriman, was to be a ‘Gospel Man’. Blocked and ridiculed by the very household which had initially promised him so much, Wilhelm quitted the Merrimans some time in 1853 and went to live near his sister’s place on the Gxarha river in King Sarhili’s country just beyond the borders of British Kaffraria. There he resumed his own name of Mhlakaza, and within a few years he began to preach a new Gospel of his own devising, which was to succeed – and to fail – beyond his wildest dreams.
Before he left the Colony, Wilhelm adopted a child whose mother and father had perished in the last great battles around the Waterkloof.16 We do not know the age of the child, or even whether it was a boy or a girl. Could Wilhelm’s niece Nongqawuse, the prophetess of the cattle-killing, have been this orphan of the Waterkloof? Might she have seen her mother shot dead with tens of other Xhosa women by the Colony’s black auxiliaries? Might she have seen her father’s body suspended on a tree, the blood still trickling from his forehead? Might she have tripped over their bones in a gully or sent their skulls rolling down the pathways as she stumbled out of the living hell of Colonel Eyre’s greatest triumph? We shall never know for certain. But we certainly should not dismiss the possibility.
1 For an overview of Xhosa religion from a historical perspective and for all references not cited
, see Peires (1981), Ch.V. For an excellent ethnological account of the Mpondo, a people very close in respect of religion to the Xhosa, see M Hunter (1936).
2 S Kay (1833), p.194.
3 JChalmers (1878), pp.356-8. This version is heavily overlaid by Christian ideas of God and the devil. It is followed by another tale, which also describes the introduction of death as an accident. For a discussion, see J Hodgson (1983), pp.32-8.
4 The quotation is from S Kay (1833), p.192. Further confirmation may be found in H Lichtenstein (1812-15), I, p.319; L Alberti (1810), p.21; H Dugmore (1858), pp.157-8. For the link with smallpox, see JWD Moodie (1835), II, p.271.
5 J Campbell, q. Peires (1981), p.68.
6 Peires (1981), Ch. V; C Stretch (1876); J Read (1818); 172c Grey Collection, South African Library, J Brownlee, ‘On the origins and rise of the prophet Nxele’.
7 Almost all the information we have on Wilhelm Goliath/Mhlakaza comes from one source, Merriman (1957). Merriman does not of course mention that his erstwhile protégé was to become Mhlakaza, and this link has not previously been noticed by historians. It is, however, irrefutably established by LG 396, G Cyrus-R Southey, 4 Aug. 1856, and is also noticed in the Graaff-Reinet Herald, 9 Aug. 1856. Governor Grey also stated at one point that Mhlakaza had worked in the Colony, where he caused his employers trouble from visions he claimed to have seen, though he is too tactful to name the employers. GH 23/26 G Grey-H Labouchere, 16 Aug. 1856. Although Mrs Merriman was at pains to deny that her former servant was Mhlakaza (see Note 111) she does admit that he disappeared into Xhosaland shortly before the Cattle-Killing and was never seen again. I must record my sincere thanks to Mr Michael Berning and Mrs Sandy Fold of the Cory Library for the interest and energy with which they have assisted me in this section.
