The first missionary to appear among the Xhosa was the Rev. J.T. van der Kemp, a religious zealot with little attachment to European cultural values. He stayed little more than a year at the Mgqakhwebe River, near modern King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape, but he left some very potent ideas behind. Van der Kemp’s Xhosa name was uNyengane (‘the one who comes to give secretly’), and the Xhosa regarded him as a benefactor who had disclosed to them secrets hitherto unknown.
New images of God, Satan, the death of the Son of God, the Apocalypse and the Resurrection were embraced by visionaries such as Ntsikana and Nxele Makanda. Ntsikana preached peace and submission, and his great hymn inspired growing numbers of indigenous converts, or amagqobhoka (people pierced by holes through which Christianity had entered). Nxele, on the other hand, preached apocalypse and practised war. Defeated at Grahamstown in 1819, he was eventually drowned trying to escape from Robben Island.
But it was always said that Nxele would come back, and in 1850 he seemed to have returned in the form of Mlanjeni (‘the riverman’), a sickly youth of eighteen who lived in the river and had the power to cast out witchcraft and foretell the future. Mlanjeni, like Nxele before him, was ithola, a war doctor, and the Eighth Frontier War (1850–1853) bears his name among the Xhosa even to this day. The Xhosa were not broken by the Mlanjeni War but they were not victorious either, and they lost yet more land. War doctors did not succeed against whites, but quite suddenly a brand new vision appeared, a vision that promised to solve all problems and bring about a ‘happy time for all’ – the vision of Nongqawuse (See The fatal prophecy).
She told the people, she told them all That the dead will arise from the graves Bringing joy and bringing wealth But she was telling a lie.
The impact of Nongqawuse’s prophecies was largely due to the spread of lungsickness, an exotic cattle disease that arrived from Europe in 1854. The most sinister characteristic of lungsickness is that it was spread by ‘lungers’, cattle perfectly healthy in their outward appearance, but highly contagious in terms of infecting other cattle. The Xhosa quarantined their cattle but were helpless against the ‘lungers’. This unstoppable disease lent credence to Nongqawuse’s contention that the Xhosa had done evil and everythingbelonging to them was consequently rotten. Only by completely removing the contaminated animals from the earth could space be made for the pure new cattle offered by the messianic figure she called Sifuba-Sibanzi (‘the Broad-Chested One’)
Sir George Grey (Governor of the Cape, 1854-1861) took advantage of Nongqawuse’s prophecies to appoint headmen and policemen. He stockpiled food, but he only distributed it to the starving Xhosa after they had committed themselves to labour contracts. He imprisoned the Xhosa chiefs on Robben Island, and seized their lands for white settlement. Many Xhosa believe that he directly instigated the Nongqawuse prophecies himself but this cannot be proven.
The Xhosa did not immediately accept the prophecies, but they gained a critical convert in the person of Sarhili, the Xhosa king. The existence of a small minority of unbelievers only served to provide Nongqawuse with an excuse for repeated postponements of the promised day. The situation was made even worse by the repeated interventions of Sir George Grey, the ruthless and paranoid governor of the Cape.
After eighteen months, it was all over: 400 000 cattle had been slaughtered and as many as 40 000 Xhosa were dead of starvation. A similar number entered the Cape Colony in search of labour opportunities, and while they were absent from their homesteads Sir George Grey stole their land and imprisoned their chiefs on Robben Island. The stubborn resistance of the Xhosa, which had held up colonial expansion for more than 80 years, was over.
