Prelude to a Xhosa disaster

Whenever the Xhosa nation is under heightened tensions, whether political or economic, it tends to appeal to numinous forces for solutions. For instance, when Nelson Mandela and his fellow inmates came out of jail, a lot of people suddenly became mystical, wearing the regalia and trinkets zobugqirha and daubing their faces with white clay, as worn and used by those going through the process of becoming witch-doctors.

When you study black South African recorded history, which begins in the colonial era, the same Xhosa phenomena plays itself over and over again in different guises.

The Hundred Years War (1779-1880), popularly known as the Frontier Wars, was probably the epitome point of crisis in Xhosa history. The nation had to come up with new ways of dealing with British encroachment into the land it drew sustenance from.

The old ways were no match against the guns and cannons of the white colonists. As a result, this period produced not just two historical figures, Nxele and Ntsikana, but two basic modes of resistance in Xhosa tradition that have stood the test of time.

Nxele was war-like and nationalist, embodying African beliefs and African culture. Ntsikana preached pacifism and acculturated Christianity with salvation that is enjoined through obedience to the will of God.

Nxele grew up in the Cape Colony, around the area now named after him, the Makana municipality, which covers the territory around Grahamstown. In fact Nxele’s proper name was Makhanda, but the missionaries somehow mispronounced it as Makana.

He was a son of a commoner who worked for a Boer farmer where he picked up Dutch, together with the knowledge of Christianity and European ways. Because of this Nxele was able to mediate between the two cultures.

At a young age he had experienced symptoms of ukuthwasa: living in the woods and fields, refusing to eat any prepared food, because it had become unclean through the sins of the people—much like John the Baptist. After his circumcision he began to preach around Xhosa villages, urging people: “Forsake witchcraft! Forsake blood!”

People found his behaviour too much even for a diviner. He was seized, bound, and a rope tied around his neck to hang him. But Nxele was saved by a man named Qalanga, a respectable man whose word was listened to. Nxele subsequently attributed this deliverance to the intervention of Christ, and this became his Damascus moment.

During the early phase his Christian views seem to have been fairly orthodox, opposing witchcraft, polygamy, adultery, incest, warfare and the racing of oxen. He spoke of God (Mdalidiphu, creator of the deep), his son Tayi, the creation, the fall, the flood, the passion and the resurrection.

Although his personal following increased slowly, unlike his contemporary Ntsikana, he had little impact on Xhosa society as a whole. He felt this was because the missionaries he was serving with, like J Read, kept him on too tight a leash, not treating him as their equal. At some stage he thought his relationship with the white missionaries should be reversed; since he was the one bringing Xhosa converts he should be the one providing the missionaries with protection.

From 1812 Nxele’s religious development took on a growing radical pan-Africanist appearance. This made it impossible for him to cooperate with the European missionaries for very long. He left them, saying he too was the brother of Christ on equal terms with them, but they ridiculed him, saying he was putting himself on the level of God by calling himself a son of God. (There is no evidence that Nxele was claiming divinity, only that he demanded equality with white missionaries.)

Around 1816, three years before his death, it became increasingly clear to Nxele that orthodox Christianity, as embodied by the missionaries, would not accept him as an equal partner in the evangelisation of the Xhosa, so he broke rank with them. He became more ambitious, seeing piecemeal conversion through individual persuasion as something below his talents. He rather coveted a mass conversion of the nation.

He wanted to achieve this through dramatic demonstration of his divine powers of healing, much like the evangelic pastors of our times.

When he lost the respect of the white missionaries he began to gradually move away from Christianity, “putting on red ochre”, as the term went for those who preferred traditional ways over new ways, and to dance (xhentsa) in the manner of diviners. Previously a staunch adherent of monogamy, he now married two young San women.

Whereas he had at first rejected gifts, he started to demand (ukuruma) the diviner’s due of cattle.

With that, the militaristic, nationalist-pseudo-mystic version of black resistance was born on the Southern tip of Africa. And this was the seed of Nogqawuse’s disaster, the cattle-killing crisis of 1856–57 caused by the prophetess visions.