Dead will Arise
Page 16
But it was precisely the continued survival of so many cattle which made the further continuation of the Cattle-Killing movement possible. So long as the believers failed to obey the injunctions of Nongqawuse to the letter, so long could she claim that the fault lay not with the prophecies but with the failure of the people to heed them properly. Had not Sarhili himself said that it would take him three months to kill all his cattle? The flame of hope once kindled was very difficult to extinguish. Even as the first prophecies failed, rumours arose at the Kei that the new people had appeared at the Kwelerha.21 The fate of the Cattle-Killing hung in the balance. And then, for the second time, King Sarhili went down to the Gxarha.
1 Brownlee (1916), pp. 126-7.
2 GH 20/2/1 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 25 Aug. 1856; GH 8/29 J Maclean-G Grey, 3 July 1856; GH 28/71 J Maclean-G Grey, 11 Aug. 1856; GH 28/71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 30 July 1856; King William’s Town Gazette, 14 Aug. 1856; Grahamstown Journal, 2 Aug. 1856; GH 28/71 H Vigne-J Maclean, 9 Aug. 1856; R Gray, ‘Journal’, Church Chronicle (Grahamstown), Vol. 2 (1881), p.330.
3 7s 6d per muid rather than the usual 13s or 15s. BK 70 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 22 Aug 1856; MS 2990 Cory Library, J Ross-R Ross, 13 Sept. 1856.
4 At the height of the excitement preceding the first disappointment, 800 hides a day were being brought into King William’s Town. King William’s Town Gazette, 14 Aug. 1856; BK 109 H Vigne-J Maclean, 20 Aug. 1856; CO 2935 R Giddy-R Southey, 15 Aug. 1856; GH 28/71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 30 July 1856; Acc 793 J Gawler-J Maclean, 25 July 1856.
5 As in 35. Also R Gray, ‘Journal’, Church Chronicle, Vol. 2 (1881), p.330.
6 For Siwani, see Grahamstown Journal, 13 Sept. 1856. The text of Kama’s meeting was secretly noted down by the court interpreter with Kama’s approval and published in full on pp.56-8 of Imperial Blue Book 2202 of 1857/1. 1 have slightly rearranged the sequence of the speeches in order to make the whole more readily comprehensible.
7 BK 86 F Reeve-J Maclean, 10 Aug. 1856.
8 GH 28/71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 30 July 1856; BK 70 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 9, 31 Aug. 1856; GH 8/29 J Maclean-G Grey, 17 July 1856.
9 GH 28/71 H Lucas-J Maclean, 1 Aug. 1856; BK 70 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 9, 11 Aug. 1856.
10 Maclean (1858), p.131; GH 8/49 J Maclean-G Grey, 28 May, 22 Dec. 1856; GH 8/23 J Maclean-W Liddle, 18 Aug. 1854; G Grey-H Labouchere 3 Oct. 1856. Imperial Blue Book 2352 of 1857, p.35 for Phatho’s cattle losses; Acc 793 J Gawler-J Maclean, 30 June 1856 for his adherence to pre-Nongqawuse prophets; BK 70 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 30 June 1856 for quote.
11 GH 8/29 F Reeve-J Maclean, 11 July 1856.
12 GH 28/71 J Gawler-J Maclean, 2 Aug. 1856; BK 70 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 9 Aug. 1856.
13 GH 8/29 J Gawler-J Maclean, 14 Aug. 1856; GH 18/6 J Gawler-J Maclean, 15 Aug. 1856
14 GH 28/71 Information communicated to the Chief Commissioner, 6 Aug. 1856; GH 28/71 Information received from a trustworthy Native, 2 Aug. 1856.
15 It is difficult to fix the exact date of the First Disappointment. The strongest rumours seem to have clustered around 9 and 14 August. See King William’s Town Gazette, 14 Aug. 1856; Grahamstown Journal, 9 Aug. 1856; Bishop Gray’s ‘Journal’, Church Chronicle (Grahamstown), Vol. 2 (1881), p.330.
16 GH 28/71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 30 July 1856; GH 8/29 F Reeve-J Maclean, 2 Aug. 1856; Grahamstown Journal, 9, 16, 19 Aug. 1856; GH 20/2/1 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 25 Aug. 1856; R Gray, ‘Journal’, Church Chronicle, Vol. 3 (1882), p.238; GH 28/71 Memo by J Maclean, 4 Aug. 1856; GH 8/29 Information communicated to the Chief Commissioner, 4 July 1856.
17 Grahamstown Journal,19 Aug. 1856; J Macdonald, ‘Manners, customs, superstitions and religions of South African tribes’, JRAI, 19 (1890), pp.280-1.
18 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 15 Aug. 1856, Imperial Blue Book 2352 of 1857-8, p.17; GH 8/49 J Maclean-G Grey, 28 Aug. 1856; BK 89 J Crouch-J Maclean, 12 Aug. 1856; GH 28/71 J Maclean-G Grey, 21 Aug. 1856; GH 20/2/1 ‘Information communicated … by a man just returned from a visit to Umhlakaza’, 18 Aug. 1856; BK 81 J Gawler-J Maclean, 30 Aug. 1856.
19 For examples, see BK 89 Secret Information, 10 Aug. 1856; Acc 793 J Gawler-J Maclean, 9 July 1856.
20 BK 70 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 22, 25, 31, Aug. 1856; BK 109 H Vigne-J Maclean, 20 Aug. 1856; King William’s Town Gazette, 25 Sept. 1856.
21 BK 81 J Gawler-J Maclean, 30 Aug. 1856.
CHAPTER 4 – ‘There is a Thing which Speaks in my Country’
CHAPTER 4
‘There is a Thing which Speaks in my Country’
1. THE REVIVAL OF THE PROPHECIES
After the disappointment of 16 August, the flame of the Cattle-Killing flickered, but it did not go out. No sooner had the prophecies conclusively failed to materialise at Kei mouth than it was rumoured that the new people were wandering about the wooded country near the Qora River or had been seen at the mouth of the Kwelerha. Less than two weeks after the First Disappointment, the order to kill was reiterated.1
Mhlakaza had an explanation ready for the failure of the prophecies: the people should have slaughtered their cattle instead of selling them off. Nongqawuse explained that even though the people were quite at liberty to buy and sell the meat of the slaughtered cattle, they should carefully preserve the umpefumlo (‘breath’ hence ‘soul’) of the beasts, so that they could rise again. As for the Englishman’s money, it would change into fire and destroy all who possessed it.2
It will be remembered that the initial motivation for the Cattle-Killing movement came from the perception that existing cattle were tainted, infected, lungsick beasts which could not be permitted to mix with the perfect cattle of the new people lest they contaminate them. Selling was certainly as effective a means of getting rid of existing cattle as slaughtering them, but it was unable to relieve the deep feelings of guilt or to satisfy the desire to propitiate the ancestors which had inspired the movement in the first place. To make the world right again, it was necessary to kill cattle in the ritual manner, that is to sacrifice them.
Sacrifice was recognised by the Xhosa as the only effective method of communicating with the spirit world.3 They looked forward especially to the great bellow made by the dying beast when its windpipe was severed. That cry was, they believed, the last breath of the animal going up to the place of the ancestors, and when they heard it, the crowd at the sacrifice would all shout ‘Camagu!’ meaning something like a combination of ‘Amen’ and ‘Be satisfied, O Great Ones!’ It was to this cry that Nongqawuse probably referred when she said that the umpefumlo should be preserved. The other functions of sacrifice were, as we have already seen, to please the ancestors, who were known to be very fond of cattle, and to allow the beast to absorb, through its quality of innocence, the evil which polluted the homestead and thereby restore its initial purity. ‘Without the spilling of blood,’ wrote TB Soga, ‘there can be no forgivenesss from sins or propitiation of the ancestors of the home.’ It would not, therefore, have seemed strange to Sarhili that the sale of cattle was insufficient to satisfy the spirits who were about to bring so great a blessing on the world.
Mhlakaza’s explanations concerning the First Disappointment were immediately accepted by Sarhili who at once set guards on all the roads leading out of his territories in order to prevent the further sale of cattle.4 Shortly after the beginning of September, he paid his second visit to the Gxarha. Once again, little is known about this visit except that the King saw something and that it was enough to satisfy him.5 According to one usually reliable source, Mhlakaza told Sarhili and his councillors that he would show them the shadows of the new people. They were to sit down and keep their eyes firmly fixed on the ground and not, on any account, to look up. They did so, and when shadows duly passed in front of their eyes, they were convince
d. An official messenger named Sixaxa told the Ndlambe chiefs that Sarhili had seen numbers of men ‘playing’ on a hill. He could not say how far away the hill was, ‘but they were seen’. ‘Where the people have landed,’ he said, ‘is a large place with a broad ditch round it inside of which a number of houses have sprung up. Not [Xhosa] houses or brick houses, but houses forced up like hills out of the earth.’ Sarhili himself told a white trader that he had seen something in the sea, something like a small speck. None of these reliable sources state that the King had any conversation with the new people.
But like all stories of visits to the Gxarha, the tale grew in the telling and less than a month later one Gcaleka reported that he had heard Sarhili saying:
I have seen [my fatherl Hintza face to face. I went to Umhlakaza’s and met my father one night among the wild mealies … he gave me the assegai which was buried with him – I have it now.6
Another report, clearly an elaboration of earlier, more accurate statements, was that a great host of new people had appeared in boats at the mouth of the Kei and told Sarhili that they had come to establish the independence of the blacks and that he must send messages to all the black nations. In the meantime, the Xhosa must continue to kill their cattle.
The importance of these rumours and reports lay not so much in their actual content as in the fact that they bore the authority of the Xhosa King. As the Ngqika Xhosa put it, ‘a chief in Kreli’s position would not send the message he has sent unless he was fully convinced of the truth of Umhlakaza’s assertions’. Time and time again, just as it seemed as if the Cattle-Killing was about to lose its momentum, Sarhili drove it relentlessly forward. ‘The whole movement [was) Krieli’s,’ said Ganya, an elderly Gcaleka councillor who unwillingly slaughtered 580 out of his 600 cattle, ‘and so resolute was he that he would not permit anyone to reason with him on the subject.7
In accordance with the orders of Mhlakaza, the most important of Sarhili’s neighbours were officially informed of the prophecies and asked to join the movement. The highest-ranking of the Thembu chiefs were firmly allied to the Cape Colony and the Regent Joyi dismissed the prophecies with contempt.
What folly is this that you are being guilty of? [Joyi asked the Thembu believers.] Did anyone ever hear of people rising from the dead? Let the greybeards come forward and speak. Let them show me Zondwa; let them show me Ndaba; let them show me my father Ngubencuka, that I may believe!
What will become of us now the greybeards have gone astray? Who will instruct the children and teach them wisdom, now that the old men have become fools? What is this I hear? What fools have you become, thus to pour out your beauty [cattle] on the ground!8
Nevertheless the Cattle-Killing evoked a huge response among those Thembu who lived on the Colony’s northeastern border, especially among the subjects of the late Maphasa, who had lost both their chief and their lands during the War of Mlanjeni. Tyopo, Nonesi, Yeliswa and other Thembu chiefs sent messengers who visited the Gxarha and returned with magical tales of supernatural horsemen and other wonders. Most of the leading Thembu chiefs remained hostile but the large number of commoner believers found an energetic leader in the ex-Regent Fadana, who seized his opportunity to emerge from 15 years of political obscurity. Fadana was joined by Maqoma’s father-in-law Qwesha, the ex-chief of the Ndungwana Thembu, who had been deposed for fighting against the Colony during the War of Mlanjeni.
The Cattle-Killing movement had less success in Mpondoland despite a personal visit – so said the believers – from the spirit Napakade himself. Sarhili did his best to induce his old rival King Faku to join him, returning stolen horses and personally accompanying an official Mpondo delegation down to the Gxarha to meet the new people. The Mpondo were not convinced, however, and they returned home saying that they had seen nothing. Faku ordered his people not to kill their cattle, commenting that Mhlakaza was no better than the false prophets Nxele and Mlanjeni.9
The Sotho King Moshoeshoe had been in close communication with Sarhili ever since the year 1852, when both kings found themselves facing Imperial troops. The Sotho victory over Governor Cathcart at the Battle of Berea profoundly impressed the Xhosa, and Sarhili’s brother Xhoxho made a special visit to Lesotho to collect some of the medicines which had enabled the Sotho to defeat the British. There is some evidence that Moshoeshoe made some enquiries concerning the Cattle-Killing in August 1856, but it was only after he had received Mhlakaza’s instructions that Sarhili sent his messenger Matomela to lay the prophecies formally before the Sotho King. Around the beginning of October, an official embassy from Moshoeshoe arrived at the Hohita …
… to see if it was true that the [Xhosa] were killing their cattle, and if it was true what Umhlakaza was telling their people … Moshesh was very anxious to know what it all meant, as he (Moshesh) wished to make himself ready for anything that might happen.10
Grey and Maclean chose to read sinister implications into Moshoeshoe’s behaviour, but it is unlikely that the Sotho King wanted to do anything more than ‘make himself ready for anything which might happen’. Neither he nor any of his people killed their cattle.
Even more ambitiously, Mhlakaza suggested that the white settlers should also kill their cattle, destroy their crops and put away their witchcraft. For, he said, ‘the people that have come have not come to make war but to bring about a better state of things for all’.11 He invited the whites to come to the Gxarha to hear and see for themselves. ‘The word to kill is for all people,’ reported Magistrate Gawler, ‘[Xhosa], English and Dutch.’ Reverend Henry Kayser of Peelton was warned that it was not enough for him to be reading from the Book – he must throw away his bewitching matter as well.
No whites ever accepted Mhlakaza’s invitation, and there is no evidence that the believers made any serious attempt to convert them. There was a general assumption among the Xhosa, which even the words of Mhlakaza could not break, that the whites had come out of a different uHlanga to their own, or, in other words, that they were an entirely different species of humanity. It was the whites not the blacks, thought the believers, who had killed Christ.12 But Christian Xhosa were a different matter. The prophecy of resurrection had its roots in Christianity, and the believers spared no effort to win over the mission residents by stressing the similarities between the teachings of Mhlakaza and those of Christ. The head of the new people was identified with Adam, ‘our first father’, and one passage from missionary Ross’s letters vividly suggests the kind of heated debates which occurred over the mission fences:
The doctrines of the atonement and that of sanctification were represented as justifying cleansing by standing on the smoke of burning fat. All that was said or done was in the name of God, or that His Word says so. It was as profusely as it was vainly used.
Few mission residents were converted by these arguments, though three old ladies did flee Knapps Hope Mission by stealth some time in October.
At the same time that Mhlakaza was seeking fresh fields for conversion, he was stepping up his campaign against the unbelievers. In the original prophecies it was enough to state in general terms that they would receive divine punishment, that they would be swept away by whirlwinds or that they would be swallowed up by the sea. By September, however, the idea was beginning to take shape that the failure of the prophecies was due in part to the selfishness of the unbelievers, and an increasing spate of rumours related the horrid punishments inflicted on stubborn unbelievers. Satan, it was said, had been let loose in the country to watch those who dared to disobey the orders of the new people and to take them to himself.13
1 BK 70 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 25 Aug. 1856; BK 81 J Gawler-J Maclean 30 Aug. 1856.
2 Imperial Blue Book 2352 of 1857-8, J Warner-WGB Shepstone, 23 Sept. 1856, p.26; Gqoba (1888) Part I; GH 8/37 Information received from Umjuza, 10 Feb. 1859.
3 The best account of Xhosa sacrifice is in Kropf and Godfre
y (1915), pp.77-8. See also W Shaw (1860), pp.449-50; JH Soga (n.d.), Ch. 8; TB Soga (n.d), pp.129-30; H Scheub, interview with Chief N Bhotomane (1968); J Peires, interviews with N Qeqe, Shixini Location, Willowvale District, October and November 1975.
4 GH 28/71 J Maclean-G Grey, 21 Aug. 1856; GH 8/49 J Maclean-G Grey, 28 Aug. 1856.
5 BK 70 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 2 Oct. 1856; BK 81 J Gawler-J Maclean, 7, 25 Sept., 1 Oct. 1856; BK 89 Secret information 18 Sept. 1856.
6 Acc. 793 Statement of Yosi 3 Nov. 1856. Kashe, the bearer of the quoted statement, gave out that he was an official messenger of Sarhili. But Sarhili had an official messenger, Sixaxa, in British Kaffraria already and it is unlikely that he would have sent another. Whoever Kashe actually was, there is no reason to doubt that this sort of statement was widely reported and generally believed in British Kaffraria. The second statement is a version of an official message as understood by Chief Xhoxho, Sandile’s somewhat slow-witted brother. BK 70 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 24 Sept. 1856.