Peires The Dead will Arise

Nongqawuse and the great Xhosa cattle killing 1856-7
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-86842-563-1
Verlag: Jonathan Ball
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 300 Seiten

The Dead Will Arise tells the story of Nongqawuse, the young Xhosa girl whose prophecy of the resurrection of the dead lured an entire people to death by starvation. The Great Cattle-Killing of 1856-57, which she initiated, is one of the most extraordinary and misunderstood events in South Africa's history. Jeff Peires was the first historian to draw on all available sources, from oral tradition and obscure Xhosa texts to the private letters and secret reports of police informers and colonial officials, and the original edition of The Dead Will Arise won the 1989 Alan Paton Sunday Times award for non-fiction.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Peires, Jeff

Leseproben

2. A SURPRISE FOR SIR HARRY SMITH

The War of the Axe, a war fought essentially over the attempts of the Cape Colony government to abrogate a treaty it had freely signed some ten years previously, was brought to an end late in 1847 by an appropriately shabby trick.1 Sandile, the senior Xhosa chief on the Cape frontier, was persuaded to enter the camp of the Rifle Brigade in order, so he thought, to negotiate a settlement of his grievances. Once inside he and his councillors were locked up in a small unheated room near the powder magazine, and warned that they would be fired on if they attempted to leave. Later they were transferred to an empty storeroom in Grahamstown, there to await the pleasure of the Governor and, incidentally, to entertain the elite of the Grahamstown settlers who vied for the opportunity to view the captive Xhosa chiefs. For the rest of his life, Sandile ‘never ceased to speak of this case as one of gross treachery’ and it left him with an abiding fear and suspicion of all things British.

While Sandile was languishing in confinement, a new Governor was arriving in Port Elizabeth. This was Sir Harry Smith, the hero of Georgette Heyer’s historical romance The Spanish Bride, and of many popular histories besides.2 Handsome, gallant and dashing, Sir Harry was the very embodiment of the romantic ideal of the Victorian soldier. His glorious triumph at Aliwal in India had brought him not only a knighthood, but a doctorate from Cambridge University, the favour of the Duke of Wellington and the personal admiration of Queen Victoria. He possessed, moreover, considerable South African experience, having commanded the Imperial troops against the Xhosa during the Sixth Frontier War (1834-5). As Governor of the short-lived (1835-6) ‘Province of Queen Adelaide’, Smith had attempted to turn the Xhosa hereditary chiefs into salaried magistrates, and to ‘civilize the Xhosa’ by means of schools, missions and trade in money. Sir Harry had a taste for ceremony and rhetoric, and an inflated respect for the power of his own personality. He called himself the Inkosi Inkhulu (Great Chief), he referred to the Xhosa chiefs as his ‘children’, and he enjoyed holding Great Meetings at which he employed gold-topped sticks and other theatrical props to impress his ideas on a reluctant Xhosa audience. Imperial historians have tended to treat Smith’s flamboyant excesses with the indulgence due, perhaps, to his good intentions. But seen from the wrong side of his boots and his riding-crop, Sir Harry’s little pranks must have appeared very different. For the Xhosa, Smith’s hands were always red with the blood of their beloved King Hintsa, who had entered Smith’s camp in 1835 with full assurances of his personal safety and never left it alive.

Arriving in Port Elizabeth early in December 1847, Smith wasted no time in resuming his role as Inkosi Inkhulu, magnified a thousand times over by his vastly increased arrogance and importance. Among the many hundreds in the crowd who came to see him was his old adversary, the Xhosa chief Maqoma. Maqoma was the elder brother of Sandile but, through a complication of the Xhosa law of succession, his junior in rank. Incomparably the most brilliant and daring of the Xhosa generals, he had led the Xhosa forces which had fought Smith almost to a standstill back in 1835. Disillusioned with the failure of the colonial government to respect the treaties of that year, and embittered by the decline of his power after Sandile’s coming of age in 1842, Maqoma sank into an alcohol-induced stupor from which even the War of the Axe failed to arouse him. He put up a merely token resistance to the British forces and readily accepted the colonial government’s offer to keep him safely out of the way in Port Elizabeth for the duration of the war. Now this valiant Xhosa soldier, defeated more by his own failings than by the British army, was to become the first victim of Smith’s return.3 As soon as Smith saw Maqoma, he fixed him with an arrogant stare and half-drew his sword from its scabbard in a gesture of attack. Maqoma started back in surprise and the settler crowd laughed their approval of the Governor’s wit and determination. But Smith was not yet finished with Maqoma. Later that day, he sent for him to come to his hotel and there, again in the presence of witnesses, he publicly humiliated the fallen chief. After storming and ranting at him and refusing to shake his hand, Smith ordered Maqoma to his knees and, placing his gubernatorial boot on the chief’s neck, declared, ‘This is to teach you that I am come hither to show [Xhosaland] that I am chief and master here.’ Maqoma’s thoughts on this occasion have been recorded by oral tradition. ‘You are a dog [alluding to Smith’s low birth] and so you behave like a dog. This thing was not sent by Victoria who knows that I am of royal blood like herself.’ Smith was to pay dearly for his insult.

The public orgy of boot-licking which the Governor demanded from the helpless Xhosa had only begun. Proceeding from Port Elizabeth to Grahamstown, Smith confronted Sandile in his prison. Brandishing a gun, he demanded that Sandile tell him the name of the Great Chief of the Xhosa nation. Sandile, in his innocence, responded that his Great Chief was Sarhili, naming the acknowledged King of all the Xhosa, who lived beyond the bounds of British territory. Furious, Smith struck the floor with his gun and yelled out that he, Smith, was the Great Chief and the Xhosa were his dogs. Out of the goodness of his heart, but for no other reason, he was going to release Sandile. The chief offered to shake Smith’s hand but was told to kiss the Governor’s boot instead: the privilege of shaking hands would depend on his future conduct.

This done, Smith set off on a triumphal procession to King William’s Town, deliberately choosing a route that led through the most densely populated parts of Xhosaland to enable as many Xhosa as possible to see him and to kiss his foot. On arriving in King William’s Town, the capital of British Kaffraria, Smith held a Great Meeting for all the Xhosa chiefs and councillors. He made great play of two ‘staffs’ which he had specially devised for the purpose. The first – a common brass doorknob surmounted on a wooden tentpole – he called the ‘staff of peace’ and the other – an ornamental pike – he called the ‘staff of war’. The beaten Xhosa chiefs were called up one by one to the central spot where Smith sat on his horse and invited them to choose between the staff of peace and the staff of war. Not surprisingly they all chose the tentpole with the doorknob on the end. The Governor then held up a scrap of paper symbolising the Treaty of 1835, which the Xhosa still adhered to, and tore it up, shouting ‘No more treaties!’ The ceremony ended with the now familiar custom whereby the chiefs kissed Smith’s boot and shouted ‘Inkos’ Inkulu! Inkos’ Inkhulu!’

What Smith told the Xhosa in this and subsequent harangues was even more shattering and distressing than the humiliation inflicted by his arrogance. All the land between the Fish and the Keiskamma rivers, hitherto an integral part of Xhosaland, was to be annexed to the Cape Colony and given out to white settlers and the Mfengu, their African allies. The Xhosa were to be shepherded into the territory between the Keiskamma and the Great Kei rivers, now named British Kaffraria and ruled directly by the Governor and his appointees under martial law. The Governor, as Great Chief, was empowered to lay down whatever laws he liked in the cause of civilisation and enlightenment.

Smith was not short of ideas on this score. British Kaffraria was to be surveyed and divided into towns and counties bearing English names. Trade was to be encouraged, and the Xhosa were to learn the value of money and the dignity of labour by working on the roads or in the Colony. The root of all evil, Smith declared, was the Xhosa love of cattle, and these were to be replaced by sheep as soon as possible. The Native Commissioners, acting as magistrates, would prevent the chiefs confiscating the cattle of their people by means of judicial fines. Any civil disputes relating to cattle would result in the cattle in question being shot out of hand. Bridewealth payments (referred to as ‘the sin of buying wives’) were prohibited. Detection and prosecution of witches and sorcerers were forbidden on pain of death. And so on.4

Smith’s programme was far too ambitious to be practical and Colonel Mackinnon, his Lieutenant-Governor in British Kaffraria, was a nonentity and a coward, whose main preoccupation was to present his administration in as favourable a light as possible.5 Nevertheless, the Xhosa felt harshly oppressed by the new regime. Never before had they been subjected to direct colonial rule, and they could not reconcile themselves to the experience. Chiefs and people were bossed about by alien officials whose decisions they were unable to question. They were cramped and restricted in strange territories, while their fertile land across the Keiskamma was occupied and desecrated by the white intruders. ‘The whole of the land of [my] forefathers is dotted with the white man’s houses and the white [surveyor’s] flags,’ exclaimed Sandile, adding that he would ‘rather die for his country than die without a cause’.6 Worst of all was the ban on witch-finding that, in the opinion of the Xhosa, gave the witches a free hand to work their nefarious magic and destroy the Xhosa nation from within. This explosion of witchcraft seemed to be the major cause of the...