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Daily Maverick
3 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
Rectifying the ‘false' colonial narrative of Nongqawuse and the cattle culling of 1856
My book, Triangle of One Hundred Years Wars, provides a compelling African perspective which unravels the forgotten history of the Eastern Cape. It interrogates the longest unparalleled wars of resistance in Africa which used to be defined as Frontier Wars; unravels the false colonial narrative of Nongqawuse as the facade of the biological weapon of mass cattle decimation of AmaXhosa, and is a critical examination of the distorted narrative in the South African secondary schools history textbooks. For purposes of this exercise the focus is on the narrative of Nongqawuse examined in the context of the wars fought by AmaXhosa to resist the Dutch and the British encroachment in South Africa from 1779 until 1879. The book is anchored on the assertion that AmaXhosa killed their cattle in order to arrest the spread of the European cattle lung sickness known as epizootic (C.B Andreas, 2005, The Spread and Impact of the Lung sickness Epizootic of 1853-57) in the Cape colony and the Xhosa Chiefdoms). The construction of the Nongqawuse narrative was a cover-up in order to hide the historical fact that the resistance of AmaXhosa was broken by decimating their productive capabilities through what one defined as the continuation of the war through the introduction of the highly contagious and lethal European cattle lung sickness. Why was it necessary to resort to the biological weapon of cattle destruction? One may recall that the royal leaders of AmaXhosa, such as Prince Chungwa of AmaGqunukhwebe, Prince Langa of AmaMbalu, Prince Ndlambe and Prince Mdushane of AmaRharhabe, fought five wars against the Dutch and the British settlers from 1779 until 1819. The wars were fought in what was known as the Zuurveld between the Gamtoos and Fish rivers. In the first three wars, between 1779 and 1803, the Dutch failed to dislodge AmaXhosa in the coveted Zuurveld region. In the fourth war of 1811-1812 AmaXhosa retreated from the Zuurveld after the British-led army resorted to ethnic cleansing by killing women and children. In the fifth war of 1819, AmaXhosa were crushed by the British artillery in the Battle of Grahamstown, which is still celebrated annually in South Africa. The rise of the highly courageous sons of King Ngqika, such as Maqoma, Tyali, Anta, Xhoxho, Mathwa and Sandile, became a game-changer in the wars of resistance. The bone-crushing confrontation between Prince Maqoma Ah! Jongumsobomvu and Major General Harry Smith, the Duke of Wellington, in 1835 marked the first defeat of the British army in Africa. Smith and the governor, Sir Benjamin Durban, were fired. The Dutch settlers embarked on the Great Trek after they suffered heavy losses in the war. In 1846, the region witnessed the spectacle of a convoy of 125 wagons loaded with ammunition and supplies led by the revered Major General John Hare, a Knight of Hanover, in the invasion of Keiskammahoek in order to dislodge AmaXhosa from the fortress of the Mathole mountains. AmaXhosa were led by the young unassuming King Sandile Ah! Mgolombane. While the British army was navigating its way to the designated military base near Mkhubiso village, Sandile launched a surprise and ruthless ambush. The overwhelming power of the pulverising onslaught dismantled the core of the British army. Noel Mostert, in his book Frontiers, defined it as the worst humiliating defeat of the British army in Africa. Hare resigned and later succumbed to a heart attack. He was buried on the Island of St Helena. On 24 December 1950, the AmaXhosa regiments and the British army locked horns in what became the longest war of resistance in Africa. It was an agonising encounter. The British named Mthontsi, Mount Misery because of the worst unbearable suffering in the history of the wars of resistance. The huge losses on the battlefield led to the recall of Harry Smith and Henry Sommerset. They were replaced by Colonel Fordyce who was later killed on Mount Misery. The collapse of the government of Prime Minister John Russell in Britain in 1852 was attributed to the war. The three consecutive defeats of the British army in 1835, 1846 and 1850-1853 raised questions about whether the army had the capabilities to counterbalance the sting of the relentless resistance of AmaXhosa. In the three defeats the British commanders were outsmarted and outmanoeuvred by the highly gifted sons of King Ngqika. The fact that the firepower of the British artillery was rendered obsolete by the brilliant execution of the surprise, simultaneous attacks remained a source of frustration. The unprecedented collective resolve displayed by AmaXhosa supported by Nkosi Mapasa of AbaThembu and Nkosi Ngxukumeshe Matroos of the Khoi-San in the War of Mlanjeni, drew a line in the sand. In essence the continued, rapid ascendancy of AmaXhosa on the battlefields through their highly innovative military strategies and the ability to sustain wars meant that an alternative strategy had to be devised to attain the colonial conquest of South Africa. The arrival of Sir George Grey in the Cape colony in 1854 – the first civilian governor since the second British occupation of the Cape in 1806 – signalled a major shift from the application of military action as an instrument of conquest of AmaXhosa. Hence AmaXhosa started experiencing an alien European cattle lung sickness at the beginning of 1855. In 1856, AmaXhosa resorted to cattle culling to arrest the rapid spread of the disease. They continued doing so until 1857. Interestingly, Professor Jeff Peires, in his book The Dead Will Arise, acknowledged the correlation between the rapid spread of the cattle lung sickness and the cattle culling implemented by AmaXhosa. On the same note, the colonial narrative that AmaXhosa killed their cattle in response to the prophecy of Nongqawuse claimed that it occurred in 1856 and 1857. The deliberate omission of the effects of the catastrophic calamity of the cattle lung sickness which occurred in the same period was meant to drive a particular narrative in perpetuation of the colonial interest to the detriment of AmaXhosa. In retrospect, the false colonial narrative of Nongqawuse created deep-seated psychological scars of shame, self-hatred and a mental inferiority complex. To a certain extent the Nongqawuse narrative contributed to the creation of a permanent state of psychological self-induced surrender and submission. The false narrative of distorted history continues to manifest itself through self-destructive tendencies such as a consumer mentality and the death of Ubuntu. In conclusion, one of the contributions of the Triangle of One Hundred Years Wars is the rectification of the continued perpetuation of distorted history. The book attempts to create possibilities of critical interrogation and the deeper understanding of our history, hence it unearthed the brilliant contributions of AmaXhosa in the longest, unparalleled wars of resistance in Africa. DM
Daily Maverick
7 days ago
- General
- Daily Maverick
In search of Nongqawuse: unraveling the tragic legacy of a young Xhosa prophetess
Traveller and author Treive Nicholas reclaims the tragic story of the Gcaleka clan, by unpacking ancient amaXhosa heritage and offering a powerful re-examination of Nogqawuse in a harshly scarred history. A story of a young orphan girl and a catastrophic historic calamity… At the centre of this disturbing, ruinous tale is a young orphan girl whose intriguing spiritual prophecy 'captures' her community, tortured as they were, and ends in the horrific and painful mass starvation and death of thousands in her community, tragically nearly destroying them as a nation. The young prophetess, Nongqawuse, from the Gcaleka clan, does not die in this event. She is doomed to watch the killing of about 400,000 of her community's cattle she had called for as a sacrifice to the ancestors to save them against the colonists. She is then fated to witness the horrific and painful subsequent starvation of 40,000 of her people. Once this humanitarian fatality is over, Nongqawuse is rewarded by the harsh voice of history as the most disastrous calamity ever to have befallen her people. She is labelled the cause of their near annihilation and for centuries has been described as the evil reason behind their brokenness as a nation. What started out as a prophecy intended to save her people against the colonialist horror they faced turns into a self-induced horror for the once proud and mighty amaXhosa in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. The profound impact of the event caused a cataclysmic shift in the trajectory of the history of South Africa, its consequences still visible and reverberating to this day. Author Treive Nicholas describes himself as a traveller 'who likes to retell stories'. In reading his book, this reviewer was moved from listening to his story to becoming a fellow traveller who saw this sad historic event in an entirely new light as he tackles the brave journey through Nongqawuse's life and times. Nicholas wanders through the horrific cattle-killing events of 1856 to 1857 in the beautiful Eastern Cape with mesmerising inquisitiveness. He paints the intriguing world of the indigenous amaXhosa, a proud, spiritual people haunted and hunted by the crusading colonialists who had beset their land out of greed, misplaced notions of superiority and egotistical lust for utter, despicable destruction and cruelty. He brings to life the fascinating key leaders of the amaXhosa, the amazing indigenous traditions, spirituality and connection to nature that governed their existence. He dwells on the historic contexts of the times, the colonial expansion, the brutality and inescapability of it, the decades of nine frontier wars fought by the Empire and the indescribable barbaric torture and killing of the amaXhosa leaders. Through this writer, readers travel to the beautiful spot where Nongqawuse met the ancestors who gave her the prophecy, to her grave on a farm where she worked as a domestic worker for the rest of her life. We meet extraordinary characters (some descendants of the very same colonialists) who know her story and care for her grave. We visit the tragic place where King Hintsa, the paramount king of the Xhosa people, was murdered so brutally by Sir Harry Smith and his men and to his grave where he rests as a symbol of Xhosa resistance and bravery. The book stirs in one profound questions about the meaning of girls and women in male-dominated societies, of the meaning of the loss of spiritually centred communities, of how humans make culprits and scapegoats of some, of the horrific pain some poor souls like Nongqawuse must bear in this life, of the beauty of the Eastern Cape and the importance of its history and the criticality of knowing this history. It's an old story from the 1700s, but it feels almost familiar. It speaks of the danger of desperate people doing desperate things in an attempt to survive. It speaks of revolutions gone wrong. I am still reeling from the facts about Harry Smith, hailed as an eternal hero in the UK, with his hands and body and head and hair soaked in the blood of thousands and thousands of people in Africa and India. What is it that we humans can make such heroes of people who prove in time to have been absolutely evil? The lesson is to fight the blindness infecting human groups who will tolerate the death and mutilation of people in huge numbers based on whatever reason they have convinced themselves of at the time. In Search of Nongqawuse is a gem. Nicholas is affected and changed by his pilgrimage, and in turn, changes the reader. He speaks with deep respect and does not allow ego, academic superiority or politics to bedevil his story. He is a traveller who fell in love with a story about a young orphan prophetess and tries to walk in her shoes, in her time and in her pain. I am richer for having read this book. The world is richer for Nicholas to have written it in the way he did. Which is why, in time, as I drive the beautiful Garden Route on holiday to the Eastern Cape, I might just turn onto a gravel route to seek out the sites he writes about. I will never stop wondering about Nongqawuse and the spirit of this orphaned amaXhosa girl and the profound existential questions her life gave birth to. DM
