by Peires, Jeff
31 It was rumoured among the believers that Chief Kama had seen a vision of ‘white tents’, MS 3328 Cory Library, J Ross-J Laing, 11 Oct. 1856; GH 28/71 Memo by J Maclean. The ‘great man’ rumoured to have appeared to believers was dressed in a white blanket. On colour symbolism among the Nguni, see Ngubane (1977), Ch. 7.
32 Journal of Bishop Gray, 11 Aug. 1856, Church Chronicle, Vol. 3 (Grahamstown, 1882), p.238.
33 Maclean (1858), p.153. See also A Smith, ‘Kafir notes’, p.372, South African Museum, Cape Town.
34 MS 172c, SA Library, ‘Kaffir legends and history by Wm. Kekale Kaye’. For more on Nxele, see Peires (1981), Ch. 5. There is further important evidence on Nxele’s prophecies in MS 157 f, SA Library, G Cyrus-R Graham, 10 Jan. 1857.
35 GH 8/29 Information communicated to the Chief Commissioner, 4 July 1856; BK 14 Statement made … by Umjuza, 24 Feb. 1858.
36 For the Khoi rebellion, see T Kirk, ‘Progress and decline in the Kat River Settlement, 1829-54’, JAH, 14 (1973). For the quotations, see Imperial Blue Books 1428 of 1852, W Uithaalder-A Kok, 11 June 1851, p.152, and 1380 of 1851, H Smith-Earl Grey, 17 March 1851, p.21. See also S Lakeman (1880), p.60.
37 United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, Cory Library Microfilm 172/2, Journal of HT Waters, 15 Nov, 1855, 1 Jan. 1856, 7 July 1857; T Soga in Monthly Records of the United Presbyterian Church, 1 March 1867, NS, Vol. 1, Part 15; MIC 172/2, Cory Library, USPG Archives, Journal of W Greenstock, Nov. 1856; BK 81 J Gawler-J Maclean, 7 Sept. 1856; MS 3236, Cory Library, J Ross-A Thomson, 24 Nov. 1856; BK 89 Substance of statements made to the Chief Commissioner, 5 Feb. 1857; CN Gray, Life of Robert Gray (London: Rivingtons, 1883), p.133.
38 Abt. 3, Berlin Missionary Archives, J Rein-Berlin Missionary Society, Report for second half year, 1857.
39 Nzulu Lwazi, ‘URev Tiyo Soga’; Kropf and Godfrey (1915), p.106; J Hodgson, Ntsikana’s Great Hymn (Cape Town: University of Cape Town, 1980), pp.37-9. Berlin Missionary Archives, Abt. 3, Report of Kropf and Liefeldt for first half year, 1856 and BK 71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 12 Dec. 1856, both specifically link the name Sifuba-sibanzi with the Russians. The suggestion that the name may be of Khoi origin comes from M Mabona, ‘The interaction and development of different religions in the eastern Cape’ (Religious Studies essay, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1975), p.107. Although I find Mabona’s general argument convincing, I consider that his specific citation (to a Latin source of 1691, in which the Khoi describe their God as ‘grandi eundem esse et deducto in latitudinem corpore’) too general to refer specifically to a ‘Broad-Chested One’.
40 JK Bokwe, The Story of Ntsikana (Lovedale Mission Press, 1914), pp.23-4. Similar prophecies may be found in MS 9063 N Falati, ‘The story of Ntsikana’ (1895), and in contemporary oral tradition.
41 Isigidimi, 2 July 1888.
CHAPTER 5 – To the Bitter End
CHAPTER 5
To the Bitter End
1. WAITING FOR NXITO
The early months of the Cattle-Killing were happy times for the believers as they wandered through their uncultivated fields or sat in the shade of their deserted cattle kraals, boasting of the powers of Mhlakaza and dreaming of a better world to come. ‘The people are led by a strange infatuation,’ reported Commissioner Brownlee. ‘In the midst of their ruin they are happy and contented and in the confidence of the fulfilment of their expectations they now no longer make a secret of what was at first so carefully concealed.’ ‘I have seldom felt more depression of spirits than after my ride through Umhala’s location,’ wrote the stony-hearted Maclean. ‘Everywhere I found the people cheerful, although the neglected fields spoke plainly of the woeful and calamitous hereafter – starvation and death – I spoke to several, but they merely smiled.’ Chief Mhala’s optimism was such that his goodwill embraced even his hated magistrate, Major Gawler. ‘His former dull and frequently sullen and uncivil demeanour towards me has lately changed,’ Gawler commented. ‘He is now very civil, high-spirited and witty.’ In October, the prophets ordered the people to adorn themselves beautifully in celebration of the coming of the new day ‘and withered old hags who had discontinued painting and ornaments for years, though tottering with age and want are found covered with red clay and ornaments, hoping soon to have youth restored and an abundance of food’. The Xhosa on the public works cheerfully mocked their white overseers and frequently burst into song until they abandoned their labour altogether to prepare for the great day.1
The euphoric moods which seized hold of the believers when fulfilment seemed at hand alternated with spells of doubt and depression as hope was continually deferred. ‘The supposed destruction of the Geyser has put their backs up,’ wrote Brownlee in December, ‘but they are going down again.’2 Maqoma and Phatho were both heavy drinkers and Mhala, too, began to hit the bottle hard during the long months of waiting.3 Even Sarhili admitted at one time that he had had doubts but that having started with this thing, he was determined to see it through.4 As time passed, the believers were left with little to do but to sit ‘in apathy regarding their fate, still deluding themselves in the hope that the time of their delivery is at hand’.5
For, by December 1856, most of the believers were getting very hungry. The worst conditions occurred in those parts of Xhosaland where drought and lungsickness had come earlier and where early prophets such as the wife of Bhulu had instigated the killing of cattle nearly a year before Nongqawuse. In Maqoma’s country and in Phatho’s, the spring of 1856 was the second sowing season to pass by without any attempt being made by the people to plant their crops. Many common people had already ‘reduced themselves to a state of the greatest destitution’ as early as August 1856, and survived only by going to the places of those who continued to kill their cattle and sharing their feasts. In late September, the first direct victim of the Cattle-Killing – the son of a diviner who had killed his cattle and refused to plant in 1855 – died of actual starvation near Peelton mission. Old people and children fainted from hunger and the very dogs were so deprived that they were too weak to rise and bark at the sight of strangers. People tightened their ‘hunger belts’ (special girdles fastened around the stomach) and women and children, still refusing to plant, were busily at work digging up roots and stripping mimosa trees of their bark, ‘eking out a miserable subsistence, and anxiously looking for help from Umhlakaza’. Down by the coast they were reduced to eating shellfish and many old people and children died of dysentry.6 Increasingly, those who had not stole from those who still had. The believers saved their milk cows till last – five or six were enough to feed a homestead – but as the prophetic exhortations continued, these too fell under the spear. Even the funeral herds of the deceased chiefs, consecrated at their burials and never slaughtered under normal conditions, were not to be spared. ‘Hunger,’ wrote Brownlee in early December, ‘is fast closing upon its victims, and though there should be no war their sufferings will far exceed anything which they have hitherto experienced.’7
In their distress, the believing chiefs turned to Sarhili, the one man who, above all others, had taken the responsibilty of the Cattle-Killing upon himself. Prematurely aged and almost blind, the entire product of his 35 years’ chieftainship now staked on the great gamble of the Cattle-Killing, the Gqunukhwebe chief Phatho called vainly on his King:
This is the second year that I have not ploughed. The lung-sickness destroyed the most of my cattle. Some time since I saw some people from Krieli’s country, they informed me that some new people had arrived in Krieli’s country and they ordered the destruction of the cattle. I therefore killed those cattle which had been left over by the lungsickness. My people are now in want … Disappointment and shame come over me that I should receive no formal announcement from Krieli … Krieli is our great chief and we look for his word.8
Maqoma, the greatest military
commander in Xhosa history and now leading his brother Ngqika Xhosa chiefs into mass destitution, also sent messengers to Sarhili saying that the Ngqika were dying and that the promises should be fulfilled without further delay.
Disaffection was likewise spreading among Sarhili’s own Gcaleka Xhosa. Nyoka, one of the King’s councillors, was sent to Mhlakaza to collect the spoil taken from the Geyser, but returned saying that the reports of its destruction were false. The unbelieving chiefs and councillors led by the sceptical Ngubo mustered their strength and demanded that the new people be made to appear forthwith. Their wives and children would starve on account of Mhlakaza’s falsehoods, they said, and if the prophecies remained unfulfilled they would cut the prophet and all he possessed into little strips. When Sarhili’s uncle, Bhurhu, a late convert to the Cattle-Killing but now fully committed to it, urged his followers to complete the slaughter of their cattle, many of them refused angrily, saying ‘that they had already killed most of their cattle, and before killing more, they want to see Umhlakaza’s people and the cattle and other things promised’. A rumour began to spread to the effect that Sarhili had been bewitched by the Thembu chief Mqanqeni for putting away his Great Wife, Mqanqeni’s sister, so that he saw things which no one else could see.9
No definite date had been set for the rising of the new people and the new cattle since the disappointment of August and the believers were growing impatient and restless. Sarhili would have liked to force the pace, but the matter was quite out of his hands. For several months, Nongqawuse and Nombanda had been demanding the return of Nxito, their chief, to his native place near the Gxarha.10 We do not know enough about Nxito to be sure why it was that Nongqawuse was so insistent on seeing him. Certainly, the fact that he was her chief must have played its part, and his return to his late father’s grave was very appropriate to the general Cattle-Killing theme of bringing the living and the dead together again. Perhaps Nxito’s advanced age – he was well over 70, perhaps well over 80, and he belonged to the fast fading generation of Sarhili’s grandparents – had something to do with it. Moreover, Nxito’s lineage, the amaTshayelo, was equal in antiquity though junior in status to the two great lineages of Rharhabe and Gcaleka which dominated British Kaffraria and transKeian Xhosaland respectively. But whatever the reason, the return of Nxito came to dominate the fantasies of these two young girls on whose slightest word the fate of thousands of Xhosa now depended. The new people would show themselves, Nongqawuse said, when Nxito returned to the Kobonqaba river and took up residence near the grave of his father Lutshaba.
Despite this evident desire to honour him, Nxito remained an unbeliever. Perhaps he knew Mhlakaza and Nongqawuse too well to take their prophecies seriously. For several months he refused to move from the safe isolation of his distant residence to the eye of the storm at the Gxarha. Finally, in November 1856, Nxito yielded to intense pressure from the believers and returned. He went to see Mhlakaza who told him that the chiefs no longer wished to communicate through a common black man like himself but through a chief of high rank, namely Nxito. The new people would appear to him soon, and when they did so he was to summon all the chiefs and all the believers to assemble together and await the fulfilment of the promises.
News of Nxito’s arrival home circulated rapidly among the believers and it was widely but wrongly reported that he had been converted from his unbelief. The return of Nxito, together with the supposed destruction of the Geyser, led the believers to expect that the rising would take place at the next full moon, and the tempo of slaughtering increased accordingly. The night of 11 December was wet and misty and the believers were consequently unable to see whether the moon was full or not. But nothing happened on the next day, or on the day after that. Once again, the Cattle-Killing faltered. Stalwart believers like the ‘disappointed and dejected’ Maqoma began to reconsider their position, and Dilima, the Great Son of Phatho, almost decided to plough.11 Sarhili grew weary of waiting and departed for the Gxarha, leaving orders that he would kill anybody who still possessed a living beast by the time he returned. He halted at his father’s old capital of Butterworth, halfway between the Hohita and the sea, prevented by the rains from going further (about 17 December 1856). There Nxito met him and told him publicly that Mhlakaza had nothing to show and that he, Nxito, refused to believe any of the prophecies.12
Sarhili was not to be put off. He returned home and killed 40 cattle – nearly a quarter of his remaining stock – on the day of his arrival. He was further encouraged by some rumours from Lesotho, which stated that the promises had already been received in Moshoeshoe’s country, to the accompaniment of great thunder and lightning, and that most of the unbelievers and their cattle had been swept into the sea. Within a week, Sarhili received a further message from the Gxarha saying that Sifuba-sibanzi, the chief of the new people, had arrived and was waiting to see him.13
Sarhili hastened down but was stopped again at Butterworth by alarming intelligence (about 24 December 1856). Nxito had long been urging Mhlakaza to formally summon all the chiefs to show them the people who had risen, but the prophetic group had demurred and stalled his requests. Eventually Mhlakaza had yielded and agreed to arrange a meeting between Nxito and the new people, but the old chief, wary of deception, had sent one of his men, a firm unbeliever named Makombe, to spy out the designated place and guard against trickery. Unfortunately for Nxito, Makombe’s presence was discovered and Mhlakaza announced that Nxito had insulted the new people by placing an unbeliever in their road. They therefore refused to have anything further to do with him. Moreover, it was being rumoured that the new people had decided not to rise as a result of the intercession of the unbelievers’ ancestors, who feared that their descendants would be damned for refusing to kill their cattle.14
Sarhili sent Ndima and Bhotomane, two high-ranking Gcaleka chiefs, down to the Gxarha to investigate the truth of these reports. At sunset, they found two of Nxito’s men who told them that they had watched all day and seen nothing, nor had they received any answers to their questions. They spoke next to Mhlakaza, who told them that Nxito had insulted the new people and that they had therefore gone off in a fury to the mouth of the Fish River. It was all Nxito’s fault: if he had obeyed his orders, the new people would have risen already. But if Sarhili himself came down in six days’ time, the new people would speak to him. Mhlakaza admitted that he was no longer in communication with the spirits and that all his information came via Nongqawuse. Ndima and Bhotomane attempted to engage the new people in conversation but they heard no sound in reply to the questions they put, only the voice of Nongqawuse interpreting the responses. They left gravely disappointed and on their return (about 28 December) they made it quite clear that they felt that the whole story of new people and new cattle was a fraud and a deceit.15
Sarhili and his councillors, gathered in Butterworth, were deeply disturbed by the news. Sarhili proposed that all the chiefs and leading believers of the the Xhosa and the Thembu should publicly proceed to the Gxarha and confront the prophets ‘as it was time … something definite should be accomplished’. The old councillor Gxabagxaba urged caution, saying that the new people had asked for Sarhili alone, and a mass confrontation might offend the new people or else give Mhlakaza an excuse for the failure of his prophecies. Doubts and hesitations began to appear for the first time among the inner circle of believers. But Sarhili took courage from the promise of a resolution in six days’ time, and he sent a messenger named Nonxwayi to the British Kaffrarian chiefs telling them that the prophecies had already been fulfilled in Moshoeshoe’s country, that the time was ripe, and that all remaining cattle and goats must be slaughtered.16
Six thousand Xhosa gathered at Butterworth to await the great day, and on or about 3 January 1857 Sarhili and a large body of councillors went down to the Gxarha according to Mhlakaza’s promise. But Mhlakaza and Nongqawuse had vanished, leaving only a message to the effect that the new people had left out of indignation
at the conduct of the unbelieving chiefs. If the next full moon (10 January 1857) should rise blood-red, Sarhili and his people should return to the Gxarha, ‘for that is a sign that the spirits are merciful again’. If not, they should wait until the full moon of February.17
The news of yet another postponement shattered the joyous mood of the expectant gathering at Butterworth, and for the first time Sarhili found himself faced with open criticism and reproach. The King was downcast, humiliated and unable to answer or evade the furious questions of the angry crowd. The meeting became increasingly stormy until it broke up in complete disorder. Sarhili began to see the abyss beneath his feet and somewhere along the long lonely road back to his Great Place – the road he had travelled down so full of expectation – he tried to kill himself. His councillors were obliged to remove all knives, spears and sharp objects from his reach and to watch him carefully. On 6 January 1857, he arrived back at Hohita.18
1 BK 70 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 19 Oct. 1856; GH8/49 J Maclean-G Grey, 3 Nov. 1856; BK 81 J Gawler-J Maclean, 14 Oct. 1856; BK 89 Communication from Lieut. Lamont, 2 Jan. 1857; GH 8/30 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 7 Dec. 1856.
2 GH 8/49 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 10 Dec. 1856.
3 GH 8/49 J Gawler-J Maclean, 11 Oct. 1856; GH 8/49 H Lucas-J Maclean, 10 Dec. 1856; BK 371 J Maclean-G Mackinnon, 4 Jan. 1856.
4 BK 71 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 21 Jan. 1857.
5 BK 70 C Brownlee-J Maclean, 11 Dec. 1856.
