Dead will Arise

by Peires, Jeff

  After the transKei invasion of February 1858, King Sarhili fled from Gawler and Currie and established himself in the forests just east of the Mbashe River, where he remained while the Cape Parliament and the British government squabbled over the future of his former territory. Both agreed that the transKei should be occupied by white settlers, but neither was prepared to shoulder the risk or the expense. Attempts were made by Sir Walter Currie to frighten Sarhili even further away, but the Xhosa King refused to abandon the hope of returning to his old country. ‘Is the ground over the Umtata [River], the ground that [I] was born on?’ he asked. ‘Why does the Government point out that ground for my people to live upon?’

  Eventually, Governor Wodehouse came up with a compromise which, like all compromises, satisfied nobody and made matters even worse. Sarhili was permitted to reoccupy the coastal strip between the Kei and Mbashe rivers, comprising perhaps a third of the total area of his former lands (1865). The Thembu of Glen Grey were encouraged to emigrate from their territory near Queenstown and to occupy the upper Kei around Sarhili’s old Great Place of Hohita. Sandile and the Ngqika Xhosa were urged to join in the great carve-up of Sarhili’s territory, but they refused to betray their King by stealing his land. Instead, the colonial Mfengu, who were dissatisfied with the high taxes and small allotments of the Cape Colony, were induced to settle the central stretch of the transKei along the waggon road from Butterworth to Port Natal. The old rivalry between the Mfengu and the Gcaleka Xhosa was assiduously encouraged by the colonial officials, who argued that ‘for many years, the [Xhosa] will require a watchful policy, and if they are to fight it is better that they should do so with the Fingo, first’.21

  The Cape government also supported the Thembu King Ngangelizwe as a counterweight to Sarhili’s power, even though Ngangelizwe was a sadistic young man who crippled his Great Wife Nomkhafulo, Sarhili’s daughter, by repeated beatings. Provoked by this brutally contemptuous behaviour, the Xhosa army swept through Thembuland, crushed the Thembu army and burned Ngangelizwe’s Great Place to the ground. But the Cape authorities intervened and forced Sarhili to accept a miserly 40 head of cattle in compensation for the injuries to his daughter. Fortified by this display of colonial support, Ngangelizwe did not scruple to murder a female attendant of his ex-wife who had foolishly remained behind in Thembuland. Again the colonial authorities, though acknowledging that Ngangelizwe was at fault, stepped in to protect him from the wrath of Sarhili. The Thembu were taken under colonial protection in 1875, which left Sarhili and his Gcaleka Xhosa surrounded and encircled, the only independent black nation west of the Umthatha River.22

  In August 1877, a fight broke out at a beer drink between some Xhosa and some Mfengu. Although Gcaleka hostility was initially directed exclusively against the Mfengu, it soon escalated when it became clear that the colonial government intended to protect their Mfengu allies. Sarhili was unable to restrain all of his followers, but the essence of his attitude was that ‘the [Gcaleka] did not want to fight the police but only the [Mfengu]’.23 Militarily, the Gcaleka never had a hope, and they greatly diminished their chances by the insistence of their wardoctors that they attack in close formation, even when confronted by fortified positions equipped with artillery. The results of such misguided tactics were clearly demonstrated at the battle of Centane (February 1878) where nearly 400 Xhosa warriors died, but only two colonials. Sarhili offered to surrender in return for a guarantee of his life and liberty, but he was told that although his life would be spared, he would most likely be imprisoned. The colonial authorities put a price of £1 000 on Sarhili’s head, but they never caught the old King. He took up residence in an impenetrable declivity in Bomvanaland, accessible only by clambering in single file across a series of ridges bounded by abrupt precipices hundreds of metres deep. There he skulked, in his own words, ‘like a baboon in a hole’.24 ‘Where is my country?’ he asked a visiting journalist. ‘Where are my children? My country, was over there – [his arm swept the horizon] – now I’ve no country.’ In 1883 he was given a free pardon but he never emerged from this last retreat. He died there in 1893, 83 years old and eating thorns indeed.

  The winds of war from Gcalekaland could not but rouse the Ngqika Xhosa west of the Kei. Crippled by the village system, impoverished by taxes and low wages, their location an open and treeless sourgrass plain, they were contemptuously neglected by the colonial government, which did not even bother to appoint efficient officers over them. Sandile, now grown very abject and drunken, was still their chief. His only response to the changing world about him was to draw in his horns like a snail and retreat into a shell of Xhosa customs and traditions which had long ceased to be relevant to the colonial situation.

  When Khiva, Sarhili’s fighting general, appeared in the Ngqika location to demand Ngqika Xhosa help for their King, many of Sandile’s followers wanted to have nothing to do with him. But the chief himself, though he hesitated a little in deference to his councillors, never really doubted his course:

  How can I sit still when Rhili fights? If Rhili fights and bursts and is overpowered, then I too become nothing. No longer will I be a chief. Where Rhili dies there will I die, and where he wakes there will I wake.25

  Sandile never had any illusions that he could survive this last war, and for the last few months of his life he strove to the utmost to make up for all the follies and mistakes of the past. Even after Sarhili had pulled out of the unequal struggle, Sandile fought on without any hope or any purpose, save never to surrender. They caught up with him at last in May 1878, and shot him dead in a skirmish in the Isidenge forests north of King William’s Town. In the same bush lay his bodyguard Dukwana, the son of the Christian prophet Ntsikana, who went out to war saying that he was not fighting against Christianity or civilisation but against the English who had robbed his people of their land.26

  The Robben Island prisoners joined Sandile to a man. ‘I would rather die in the field to be eaten by vultures than be carried out of my house on a board,’ exclaimed the old chief Siyolo before he took to the Fish River bush, the scene of his greatest exploits during the War of Mlanjeni.27 He got his wish. Phatho’s son Dilima fought with him and was the last chief to surrender his arms. Xhoxho, Sandile’s brother, was shot dead with his son by a police patrol. Tini, Maqoma’s son, headed for the Waterkloof and eventually joined Siyolo in that old warrior’s last stand on the mountain of Ntaba kaNdoda.

  Kama, Siwani, Toyise and the other traditionally pro-government chiefs, together with Feni and Oba, stuck by the government. So did the people of Anta, who died just before the war began. Old Soga, the unbelieving councillor, opposed the war but refused to abandon his chief. He lurked about his village until the colonial Mfengu caught him and, granting his last request, killed him with his own spear. The only other noted unbelievers who fought with Sandile were his brother Matana and Chief Jali, who had been a young man at the time of the Cattle-Killing. Both were killed. Most of the Ngqika unbelievers, headed by the councillor Tyhala and Kona Maqoma, took refuge at Mgwali mission station and refused to fight, but their loyalty availed them nothing. In September 1878, their old friend and adviser Charles Brownlee appeared and personally ordered them to cross the Kei River, never again to return to their homeland. The loyal Ngqika were aghast and reproached themselves as cowards for their neutrality. Tyhala, for once, did not obey. He died the day before the removal, so it was said, ‘of a broken heart’.28

  Phatho and Mhala did not fight, for they had died in 1869 and 1875 respectively. Phatho never made it to Robben Island, but was detained for treatment at Somerset Hospital. There he encountered Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria’s younger son, and Grey ordered him released as a gesture to please the young prince. As we have seen, Maclean refused him permission to resume his chieftainship or gather his people together, and he died in such utter obscurity that the clerk in charge of the district where he lived did not even bother to report his death, which occurred in Oct
ober 1869. Mhala served out his full term and was released in 1863. He repeatedly asked permission to go to the Ndlambe settlement at Idutywa, but the colonial authorities were afraid that he would dominate his weak son Smith and link up with Sarhili. He was forbidden to possess land of his own and forbidden to reunite himself with his faithful Great Son Makinana, who lived in exile across the Kei. Eventually, he settled down with his son Ndimba, who lived in the Ngqika Location, and he died there on alien ground one rainy evening in April 1875. The Xhosa said that the heavens themselves were weeping for the passing of the old chief.29

  And Nongqawuse? As we have already mentioned, Mhlakaza and most of the other residents of the prophetic homestead died of starvation, but the prophetess herself survived and was handed over to Major Gawler by the chief of the Bomvana. She stayed with the Gawlers for a while, and one day Mrs Gawler dressed her up together with Nonkosi, the Mpongo prophetess, and Dr Fitzgerald took them down to the photographer, where the stolid portrait reproduced in this book was taken. She also made several statements relative to the ‘chiefs’ plot’ but even the prosecuting genius of Maclean could do nothing with them. In October 1858, she sailed with Nonkosi, Mhala and the Gawlers to Cape Town on board the schooner Alice Smith. The two prophetesses were taken to the defunct Paupers’ Lodge, where the female prisoners and transportees were confined under the supervision of a Mrs Connelly.30

  And there Nongqawuse vanishes from recorded history. When the prison at the Paupers’ Lodge was broken up in August 1859, her name did not appear on the list of female prisoners. One ‘Notaki’ is listed, who must have been either Nongqawuse or Nonkosi, but it is absolutely certain that only one of the two prophetesses returned with the other female prisoners to East London. Sir Walter Stanford stated with assurance that she was still living on a farm in the Alexandria district near Port Elizabeth in 1905. The settler historian Cory was told in 1910 that she was alive somewhere under the name of Victoria Regina, but he failed to find her. In 1938, however, an itinerant journalist named DR d’Ewes stumbled across her tracks in Alexandria. Two elderly Xhosa of that neighbourhood informed him that she had settled down with relatives on a local farm, married and had two daughters. On one occasion, she had gone to live in Port Elizabeth, but when the Xhosa there discovered who she was, she had been forced to flee for her life. She was buried along with her daughters on the farm Glenthorn near Alexandria.31

  I visited Alexandria myself in the hope of turning up something new, and was introduced to the great-nephew and great-niece of Nongqawuse. The great-niece insisted on telling me in English what she called ‘the true story of Nongqawuse’. It began, ‘Umhlakaza was a Kaffir witchdoctor,’ and it was taken from a primary school reader. Her brother was a little more helpful. Speaking in Xhosa, he told me that his great-aunt Nongqawuse was ‘a very nice lady’, and that right up to the time of her death she would warn the people ‘against the coming wrath of God’.32 And so Nongqawuse departed this life as quietly and elusively as she entered it. But how great were the changes she wrought in between!

  1 1 intend no aspersions on the personal morality of the German settlers. The point is that Grey was trying to constitute a white rural working class in a country which lacked the material preconditions for it. For details, see Rutherford (1961), Chapter 25. For drunkenness and other misconduct, Berlin Missionberichte, Abt. III, Berlin Mission Archives, A Briest-BMS, 22 May 1857, A Kropf-BMS, 2 July 1857.

  2 GH 1/264 Stanley-Grey, 4 May 1858.

  3 Rutherford (1961), pp.297-8, 425. Grey ever after maintained that the reason he was recalled was his fearless refusal to submit to Lord Derby’s nepotistic desire to appoint his kinsman, EM Cole. To believe this is to ignore all Grey’s other derelictions of duty. See Rutherford (1961), Chapters 26-28, for the remainder of Grey’s South African career. For black reaction, King William’s Town Gazette, 1 Oct. 1859.

  4 For the Keppel affair, see BJ Dalton, ‘Sir George Grey and the Keppel affair’, Historical Studies (Melbourne) 16 (1974). Also the Newcastle papers, University of Nottingham, for example, NE 11031 H Keppel-Lady Grey, 27 Feb. 1861.

  5 MS 3030, Cory Library, Grahamstown, J Ross-B Ross, 13 Aug. 1860.

  6 For Grey’s second governorship of New Zealand, I have relied heavily on Dalton (1967), Chapters 6-8.

  7 Rutherford (1961), pp.558-9.

  8 Rutherford (1961), pp.504-6; Gorst (1908), pp.24-6.

  9 Rutherford (1961), Chapters 38-42.

  10 For the statistics, see Bergh and Visagie (1985), p.56. For the land regulations of British Kaffraria, see GH 8/35 Schedule 102, 15 July 1858; King William’s Town Gazette, 26 June, 24 July, 11 Dec. 1858.

  11 King William’s Town Gazette, 27 March, 26 June 1858.

  12 For a list of the first black applicants, Government Notice 3 of 1858, King William’s Town Gazette, 30 Jan. 1858. In addition to these, Grey set aside considerable grants of land to the chiefs’ children whom he had educated in Cape Town. See GH 8/39 J Maclean-G Grey, 15 Aug. 1859. For the desire of Xhosa and Mfengu to avail themselves of the Grey titles, see GH 8/34 Schedule 37, 11 March 1858. For a forceful comment on the differential treatment of whites and blacks with respect to land, see ‘Anti-Humbug’ in the Cape Argus, 13 Aug. 1859.

  13 King William’s Town Gazette, 26 July 1861.

  14 For the hut tax, see BK 114 Circular to special magistrates, 15 July 1858.

  15 GH 8/38 J Maclean-G Grey, 9 Aug. 1859; GH 8/38 Schedule 60, 13 June 1859; Du Toit (1954), pp.171-2; BK 83 Interview between the Chief Commissioner and the Chief ‘Pato’, 11 Oct. 1860.

  16 Grey letters, South African Library, Cape Town, J Gawler-G Grey, 6 July 1866, F Travers-G Grey, 14 May 1863.

  17 The best overview of Brownlee’s later career is Saunders (1977).

  18 For Brownlee and the last Frontier War, see Spicer (1978), passim, esp. pp.74,126-32, 214.

  19 The reference to Vigne is to his relationships with a daughter and a granddaughter of chiefs captive on Robben Island. Stokwe and Phatho are the most probable, given their respective ages. GH 30/5 F Travers-J Maclean, 6 Oct. 1860. Grey letters, South African Library, Cape Town, R Southey-G Grey, 5 Oct. 1872 (Currie); ibid., J Fitzgerald, 26 Dec. 1890 (Fitzgerald); Black Watch Regimental Museum, Perth (Reeve).

  20 J Gawler, The British Line in the Attack (London: W Mitchell, 1872); Sikhim, with Hints on Mountain and Jungle Warfare (London: E Stanford, 1873); The Two Olive Trees (London: WH Guest, n.d.); Our Scythian Ancestors (London: WH Guest, n.d.).

  21 Grey Letters, South African Library, W Currie-G Grey, 24 Dec. 1861. Saunders (1978), pp.9-15, is the most succinct guide to these complicated events.

  22 Spicer (1978), pp.29-42. For a graphic description of the injuries inflicted on Sarhili’s daughter by Ngangelizwe, see Chalmers (1878), pp.400-1.

  23 On the Ninth Frontier War, see Spicer (1978), an excellent thesis which deserves to be published.

  24 Cape Times correspondent, quoted by F Dike in the programme notes to her excellent play, The Sacrifice of Kreli (1976).

  25 For Sandile’s last years, Brownlee (1916), pp.298, 301; CO 3090 C Brownlee-R Southey, 1 Oct. 1866. For the quote, Interview with Chief F Mpangele, Mgwali Location, 26 Aug. 1975.

  26 Spicer (1978), p.158.

  27 Interview with S Mgqala, Sittingbourne Location, King William’s Town District, Aug. 1975.

  28 Brownlee (1916), p.315.

  29 Phatho: GH 30/5 F Travers-J Maclean, 2 Aug. 1860; CO 3146, 14 Oct. 1869. Mhala: for example, NA 173 T. Liefeldt-Sec. for Native Affairs, 16 April 1875; NA 841 C Brownlee-J Ayliff, 1 March 1875; CO 3140 J Warner-Colonial Secretary, 12 June 1868 and marginal notes; CO 3090 C Mills-J Warner, 29 March 1866. For Mhala�
�s death, Kaffrarian Watchman, 19 April 1875.

  30 South African Commercial Advertiser, 3 Sept. 1859, 30 Oct. 1859. BK 111 C Piers-J Maclean gives a list of the women discharged from the Paupers’ Lodge. The prisoners were given numbers according to their date of arrival. ‘Notaki’ is the only prisoner who arrived subsequent to April 1858.

  31 W Stanford, The Reminiscences of Walter Stanford, Vol. 1 (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 1958), p.5; G Cory, ‘I tramp into Kaffirland in search of History’, South African Railways Magazine (1927), p.2022; Burton (1950), p.96; Eastern Province Herald, 22 Nov. 1938. Both Burton and D’Ewes refer to 1898 as the year of Nongqawuse’s death, but I am disposed to think that their Xhosa informants simply said that she died ‘about the time of the rinderpest’, which would leave Stanford’s date as a clear possibility.

  32 Interview with Wallace Sukutu and sister, Alexandria, 27 Feb. 1976

  Afterword (2003)

  Afterword (2003)

  The research for this book spanned ten years, 1975-1985, starting at the Gxarha River in Centane district, scene of the prophecies, and ending at Perth in Scotland, home to the regimental museum of Colonel Eyre and Major Gawler. Returning home to Grahamstown in July 1985, my suitcases bulging with documents, I found a very different South Africa to the one I had left a year previously. The month of my return, I attended the funeral of Matthew Goniwe and the Cradock Four, murdered outside Port Elizabeth by an apartheid death squad. The red flag of the South African Communist Party was openly displayed on the wall of the Cradock stadium and the speakers at the funeral – Steve Tshwete, in a brief stopover between Robben Island and exile; Allan Boesak, still then the people’s hero; above all, Victoria Mxenge, widow of slain struggle lawyer Griffiths Mxenge, and herself to die a martyr’s death within the month – were the founders of the Mass Democratic Movement that heralded the end of the old order. As we drove home through the dusty streets of Lingelihle township, small black children raised their fists to salute us, white though we were, shouting ‘Viva, qabane [comrade], Viva!’