by Peires, Jeff
Bradford’s thesis is, of course, incompatible with the identification of Mhlakaza and Wilhelm Goliath, and she concentrates a great deal of firepower on disproving my case. The identification is, she feels, ‘a creative interpretation of seemingly non-existent sources’, an ‘assertion seemingly based on no evidence whatever’. Bradford was not, of course, the only critic to voice a concern about the identification of Mhlakaza with Wilhelm Goliath, and I have dealt with the matter already, as also with my view of the relationship between Mhlakaza and Nongqawuse. Suffice it here to say that the evidence is tenuous but it is there, and it is quite misleading to state that there is ‘no evidence whatever’ or that the sources are non-existent.
But, if Mhlakaza was not Goliath, who was he? According to Bradford, Mhlakaza was ‘a diviner, a chief’s councillor, an owner of large herds’. It is this statement of Bradford’s, rather than my own identification of Mhlakaza with Goliath, that is an ‘assertion seemingly based on no evidence whatsoever’. There is no evidence that Mhlakaza was ever a ‘diviner’ or that he ever engaged in doctoring practices. The only evidence that he was a chief’s councillor or that he was possessed of large herds of cattle comes from the ‘Deposition made by Nonquase’ already discussed. This dubious document was fabricated in Colonel Maclean’s personal lair of Fort Murray at the very height of the ‘chiefs’ plot’ campaign against the Xhosa chiefs. Nongqawuse’s alleged deposition is very glib, smooth and unXhosalike in its phrasing. It is entirely geared to support the official line of a ‘chiefs’ plot’, as for example where Nongqawuse allegedly states that Mhlakaza ‘often blamed [Sarhili] as the sole cause of the cattle-killing which was done for the purpose of leading the [Xhosa] to war and driving out the English’. Given the fact that Maclean’s entire purpose was to send the chiefs to Robben Island, it most obviously suited him to depict Mhlakaza as a rich and important councillor, the intimate and co-conspirator of warlike chiefs, rather than a pathetic and deluded nobody whose visions had so tragically come to grief. Moreover if Bradford wants to accept those parts of the ‘Deposition’ which state that Mhlakaza ‘was a councillor of Xito’ and that Mhlakaza ‘had many cattle’, then she must also accept those parts of the ‘Deposition’ which state that the chiefs and Mhlakaza had many secret meetings from which Nongqawuse was excluded (so much for the cattle-killing being a ‘woman event’) and that the underlying purpose of the entire movement was to foment a war against the British colonialists.
We come now to Bradford’s view of Nongqawuse herself. Bradford sees Nongqawuse as a ‘proto-feminist’, ‘an extremely independent adolescent, almost certainly an intombi’. She feels that The Dead Will Arise wrongly stresses Nongqawuse’s ‘deficiencies as a woman’, and deliberately omits ‘references to her attractiveness and her intelligence’. This is due to gender imperialism, more especially the tendency of secondary literature to ‘display little interest in a single woman’.
[Nongqawuse] had, however, almost certainly undergone initiation ceremonies associated with puberty. These established her new status as a sexual being, an intombi, for whom non-penetrational sex was normal.
It is precisely because Nongqawuse has become, in Bradford’s view, ‘an adolescent of marriageable age’, a woman but not yet a wife, quite possibly also a victim of incest in Mhlakaza’s household, that she is so aware and so condemnatory of ‘male sexual offences’, ‘witchcraft, fornication, incest, adultery and “other things”’, ‘promiscuous men, engaging in sex that defiled them’ and ‘adulterous and incestuous men’. All of this depends on a single phrase [imibulo nokurexeza – incests and adulteries] from the original Xhosa version of WW Gqoba, reproduced without a context on p.150 of The Dead Will Arise.
Let us start with the question of Nongqawuse’s age and sexual status. We should begin perhaps by forgetting about the well-known photograph of Nongqawuse, dressed up by Mrs Gawler, because it was taken at least two years after Nongqawuse began to prophesy. There is, however, no source which contradicts the assessment of the police informer that she was about 16 years of age in June 1856, in other words of a physically marriageable age. But that ‘she had almost certainly undergone initiation ceremonies associated with puberty’, as Bradford asserts, is another question altogether. There is no empirical support at all for Bradford’s insistence that Nongqawuse was an intombi, which Bradford takes to mean ‘a sexual being’.
I have already put forward my interpretation that it was precisely Nongqawuse’s status as a pure and undefiled child that made her suitable to be approached by the new people. Gqoba, our only reliable Xhosa source, refers to Nongqawuse and her cousin, not as iintombi (plural of intombi) but as amantombazana, that is very young girls. Later in his text, he even more damningly refers to Nongqawuse herself as intwazana, another word for ‘very young girl’.18 One implication of Gqoba’s repeated use of the term intombazana is that, however physically mature Nongqawuse may or may not have been, she was not yet socially recognised as a woman, in other words she had not yet undergone the ceremony of intonjane. Bradford is surely pushing it much too far when she speculates that Nongqawuse was a marriageable single girl resistant to the sexual norms of promiscuous Xhosa men. If one has to speculate at all, it would accord more with the available evidence to identify Nongqawuse with the orphan of the Waterkloof [Ch. 1 (4)], traumatised by the cruel murders of her parents. If she was raped at all, as Bradford clearly thinks she was, she was much more likely to have been raped by the colonial auxiliaries in the Waterkloof than by anyone else.
It has already been pointed out that Bradford’s argument with respect to Nongqawuse’s sexual politics depends on a single reference to imibulo nokuxekeza (incests and adulteries) on p.150 of The Dead Will Arise. I had quoted this phrase from Gqoba’s original, since it was omitted from Rubusana’s abridged version, and for that Bradford thanks me. She takes issue however with my explanatory remark that ‘Gqoba is probably referring less to specific misdeeds than to sexual indiscretions generally’ which, she feels, is part of my general androcentric tendency to sideline sexual and gender issues. We are thus forced to confront the question of the extent of ‘Nongqawuse’s concern with adulterous and incestuous men’.
The concept of pollution was absolutely central to the ideology of the cattle-killing [Ch. 4 (4)]. The cattle were dying of lungsickness because people were dirty from witchcraft, the entire world had become defiled. The only way out was to cleanse the world by destroying all the existing cattle and other impure things, so as to create a climate conducive for the rising of everything which was pure and good. Thus far, I think Bradford would agree with me. Where we part company is where she reads the phrase ‘incests and adulteries’ into every mention of witchcraft. We therefore now need to check out the extent to which this is correct.
The question of witchcraft is emphasised in the very first paragraph of Gqoba’s text, the paragraph in which the two strangers give their great message to Nongqawuse that the cattle must be killed ‘because they have been herded by defiled hands, for there are people about who are handling witchcraft’. The last words of the strangers, just before they disappear, again insist that people must ‘put aside their witchcraft’. Shortly thereafter, according to Gqoba, Nongqawuse guides a delegation of chiefs down to the mouth of the Gxarha River. Only those who are free of witchcraft are allowed to drink water en route. Nongqawuse then shows the chiefs a mysterious black shape (isibiba) moving up and down in the sea. The isibiba speaks through the medium of Nongqawuse, repeats the instructions of the strangers, and again concludes with the words that the people must leave off all their witchcraft. This first part of Gqoba’s article refers exclusively to witchcraft. There is no mention anywhere of ‘incests and adulteries’.
The Xhosa word used by Gqoba, ubuthi, normally translated as ‘witchcraft’ is actually a noun. In terms of its etymology, the meaning is closer to ‘a bad substance’ rather than ‘bad behaviour’. There is no way that the term ubuthi (
‘witchraft’) automatically subsumes the terms imibulo (‘incests’) or ukurexeza (‘the committing of adultery’). In fact on the only occasion when Gqoba makes mention of ‘incests and adulteries’, he distinguishes clearly between these and witchcraft, saying ‘the cattle were reared by dirty hands that were handling witchcraft and other things such as incests and adulteries’. It is further important to note that whereas the references to witchcraft are foregrounded at the beginning of the story and in the commands of the strangers and the isibiba, the solitary reference to ‘incests and adulteries’ comes quite near the end of the second part, and it is uttered not by the strangers or the prophets but by the hapless chiefs imprisoned on Robben Island. As for my explanatory comment that the word imibulo need not be taken too literally, a comment which Bradford finds hard to accept, I can only quote the standard Xhosa dictionary as follows: ‘… formerly this word was limited to incest, but is now extended almost to all impurity; an inordinate desire; fornication’. Even more broadly, the term comes from the verb ukubula, meaning ‘to confess’, hence imibulo – ‘things needing to be confessed’, for example by a newly-married couple opening their hearts to each other on their wedding night. Maybe I am taking imibulo too lightly by translating the word as ‘sexual indiscretions’ but neither the word nor its context have the weight to convey ‘incest’ in its most literal sense.
Let us pass now to Bradford’s accusation that I have deliberately selected evidence that shows Nongqawuse in a bad light while deliberately ignoring ‘references to her attractiveness and intelligence’. It is not my fault that the statement of the police informer already quoted, to the effect that Nongqawuse had ‘a silly look, and appeared to me as if she was not right in her mind’, is the only first-hand description we have. On the other hand, the source Bradford cites to the effect that Nongqawuse was ‘intelligent, and gave her evidence freely’, comes from nowhere else than our old friend, the ‘Deposition’ at Fort Murray. Given that Maclean was trying to convict the chiefs, he was hardly likely to say that Nongqawuse was, for example, ‘distrait and gave her evidence under duress’.
Bradford’s second piece of evidence demands more respect, as it comes indirectly from WW Gqoba. Bradford has, unfortunately, only read Jordan’s English translation where Nongqawuse is described as ‘beautifully painted with red ochre’. It could be argued that Gqoba’s phrase eyenze izazobe zembola, meaning ‘decorated with red ochre’ does not necessarily imply that she looked beautiful, only that she had decorated herself. However, the overall tenor of Gqoba’s remarks is certainly to present Nongqawuse in a positive light, and to that extent Bradford is supported. Unfortunately, the very next word after ‘ochre’, Gqoba calls Nongqawuse an intwazana, (‘young girl’) which is not compatible with Bradford’s vision of an extremely independent proto-feminist. The same paragraph also contains further bad news for Bradford:
When they arrived, Nongqawuse said that the group to go to the estuary [of the Gxarha River] should be selected, giving preference to the chiefs. Truly, this was done. As the people approached the place, they became fearful, as they came to that river of the Kamanga plants, many of them became thirsty, their throats became dry … The thirsty ones were heard to say ‘May a thirsty person drink?’ Nongqawuse replied – ‘Whoever is without witchcraft may drink, such need have nothing to fear.’
If Bradford is correct and the cattle-killing movement is a woman uprising against patriarchy, why does Nongqawuse give preference to the (male) chiefs above all others? If she is driven by anger against ‘promiscuous Xhosa men’, why does she pass up this golden opportunity – the chiefs are in her hands, they are fearful, they are desperate for water – to reprimand them for their fornications, incests and adulteries? Why does she limit her proscription to ubuthi, witchcraft, a category which does not necessarily imply sexual connotations?
Putting aside these petty quarrels about evidence, which are the historian’s stock-in-trade and not necessarily interesting to more normal people, there are three good reasons why Bradford’s feminist view of the cattle-killing movement is misleading and wrong:
• The cattle-killing was not a woman event, or a youth event, or a chiefs’ event, or a commoners’ event. It was an event of all the people, summarised in Nongqawuse’s vision of a new world, born again, fresh, free from badness, free from evil. Everybody would benefit, even the whites; there would be a ‘happy state of things to all’; ‘nobody would ever lead a troubled life’. It was only after the prophecies failed to materialise, that the movement became more sectional, and consequently more hostile to whites, mission Christians and unbelievers.
• Second, the cattle-killing was traditionalist. It called for the killing of living cattle, but only to make way for new cattle which were to be perfect and free from evil. It appealed to women, but the women believers looked forward not to the end of patriarchy but to the rising of yet more cattle and yet more chiefs. It did not call for a new social order despite incorporating a number of Christian motifs. The world to come was new and fresh, but it was not different in its nature to the world which was old and familiar.
• Third, one cannot discuss the cattle-killing without taking full account of its entire ideology. One cannot selectively ignore the Christian aspects which entered via Mhlakaza’s experiences as Wilhelm Goliath. Bradford shows no interest whatsoever in the stated beliefs and objectives of the believers. She refuses to note the significance of the name ‘Sifuba-sibanzi’ whom she refers to in passing as ‘a dead Xhosa paramount chief’. There never was any Xhosa chief named Sifuba-sibanzi and, if Bradford had the slightest interest in Xhosa history for its own sake, she would have known that. But she doesn’t.
Materialist and structural critiques
Jack Lewis and Timothy J Stapleton have different views from myself concerning the structure of precolonial Xhosa society. Their views on the cattle-killing are therefore, not surprisingly, also different from my own. Though both have worked their way through much of the same primary material on which The Dead Will Arise is also based, neither poses the same fundamental challenge to my interpretation of sources as does Helen Bradford.
Jack Lewis’s ‘Materialism and Idealism in the Historiography of the Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement 1856-7’ is essentially a reworked chapter from his Ph.D thesis entitled ‘An Economic History of the Ciskei 1848-1900’.19 Lewis was the first scholar to analyse the massively detailed household-by-household census, cattle included, of the Rharhabe Xhosa undertaken by the colonial authorities in 1848, less than ten years before the cattle-killing. He was thus able to document for the first time the huge disparities in size and wealth that had emerged among the supposedly homogenous Xhosa population. In Sandile’s chiefdom, for example, Lewis found that the wealthiest 20% of households possessed nearly 50% of the population and over 60% of the cattle, whereas the poorest 25% of households possessed only 5.3% of the cattle. Out of a total population of 26 784, 1 868 men were without wives.
These statistics are suggestive indeed, and would have greatly enriched The Dead Will Arise [Ch 5 (4)], more especially if Lewis could have established a clear connection between the rich and the poor households, on the one hand, and the gogotya and thamba factions on the other. This however he does not seriously attempt to do, depending instead on his contention that a correct analysis of class antagonism in Xhosa society is all that is required. In Lewis’s view, military defeat and territorial losses threatened the access of the younger generation to the material basis of production. The cattle-killing therefore ‘amounted to a revolt against the power of the elders’ by women as well as the youth. The chiefs supported the movement, according to Lewis, because they had no other way of addressing the crisis of production, and they had finally realised the need for political unity. That the destruction of one’s cattle is hardly the best way to solve one’s economic and political problems does not seem to have occurred to Lewis.
Lewis dismisses my feebl
e attempts to be specific about individual cases as mere empiricism. ‘Surely no historical explanation looks for absolute law-like regularities without exceptions,’ he points out. Lewis does not challenge, indeed he seems to accept, my exposition of the central ideas behind the cattle-killing but he criticises what he calls my ‘idealist’ explanation. He acknowledges the discussion of ‘material causes’ such as lungsickness and territorial losses but, according to Lewis, ‘material causes are treated [in The Dead Will Arise] as mere conditioning circumstances and not as the product of changing social relationships in Xhosa society under the impact of colonialism’.
It is time, I think, for me to come out of the closet. Jack Lewis and myself are products of the same intellectual generation, the generation that took Marxism seriously. Even if I carefully avoided sentences like ‘… the dominant social relations between people are an expression of the way society produces and reproduces its material existence’, I still subscribe to the same materialist agenda as Lewis. The differences between us are not of idealism versus materialism, or overt versus covert materialist discourse, but due to the fact that I interpret the structure of Xhosa society differently. Lewis’s polemic, based as it is on the 1848 census, should not be directed against The Dead Will Arise. It should rather be directed against Chapter 3 of my earlier book, The House of Phalo, which puts forward a very different model of precolonial social relations. Lewis sees social tensions in Xhosa precolonial society arising out of conflicts between richer elders and poorer youth, an idea borrowed from Claude Meillassoux, who worked on stateless societies in West Africa. I have always felt that Meillassoux’s analysis is inappropriate to chiefly societies such as South Africa, and that the relevant social classes in precolonial Xhosa society were not the old and the young, but the chiefs and the commoners.
