Nongqawusa and the Xhosa Cattle Killing

Variations on the legend

1. Freda Troup (in South Africa)

Freda Troup's account differs from Matshoba's ("Three Days in the Land of Dying Illusion").

She writes that Nonqawusa's uncle went to see the figures of his niece's vision for himself.

He saw "a number of Black people (among them his dead brother) who said they were Russians.

The Crimean War has just finished.

The Russians were perceived as the eternal enemies of White Europeans.

These Russians had come from the battlefields beyond the sea where they had been fighting the English.

They were waging perpetual war against the English.

They had come to help the "kafirs."

The Russians gave instructions for the simultaneous sacrifice of all livestock and the abandonment of the farmlands.

They said that following the slaughter, the millennium would follow for the Xhosa nation:

"on a certain day great herds of fat cattle would fill the kraal, grainpits would overflow, wagons, clothes, guns and ammunition would be abundant. The skies were to fall, crushing the Whites and the Blacks who had not obeyed. Two suns would appear and come into titanic collision, after which all who wore trousers (these included the once vassal Mfengu, now protégés of the Whites) would be swept away in a whirlwind."

Chief Kreli acted on Nongqawusa's uncle's confirmation of his niece's vision.

The Xhosa nation was brought to the verge of mass starvation.

From this moment on, "the Xhosa ability to resist White encroachment had been irreparably undermined."

2. Credo Mutwa (in My People)

Credo Mutwa visualizes the slaughter of the cattle.

He gives a graphic description:

"It was one of the strangest and most fantastic sights upon which the sun has ever risen ... (Transparency 1)

When day breaks next morning, Mutwa describes how Xhosa people waited in vain for the millennium -

"They were waiting and they were staring ... (Transparency 1 cont'd)

Mutwa goes on to explain how people, on the verge of starvation, resorted to cannibalism -

"Men found themselves ... (Transparency 1 cont'd)

According to Mutwa, eventually Nongqawusa was banished by Chief Kreli to the land of the Pondo, to the north of the Xhosa lands.

Nongqawusa lived the rest of her life in exile.

She died in Pondoland in 1928, at the age of 88.

At the end of his account, Mutwa salutes the generosity of many White farmers who gave food to the starving Xhosa at the time.

Mutwa's explanation of Nongqawusa's vision

The "three figures" who spoke poor Xhosa and were covered from head to foot in "great karosses made of the skins of long-haired goats - so that not even a finger was visible" - which appeared before Nongqawusa and Mhlakaza, were really White men in disguise.

Mutwa calls the White men's strategy "the cleverest piece of psychological warfare the world has ever seen."

The strategy was totally successful; it caused the Xhosa to lose "all faith in themselves, their leaders and their witchdoctors."

It broke the spirit of the Xhosa nation.

Mutwa concludes that high officials in the White colonial administration stood to gain most from the tragedy.

He points out that most White political and administrative aspirations regarding the control and displacement of the Xhosa people were swiftly achieved immediately after the catastrophe.

Mutwa accuses Sir George Grey of having devised the strategy.

Sir George Grey had been appointed governor of Cape Colony in 1854.

Even the British government acknowledged that he had used unusual methods to repress not only the Xhosa in South Africa, but also the Maoris in New Zealand.

Whatever the truth behind the facts, the Xhosa cattle killing brought the proud Xhosa nation to its knees.

Soon after, in 1877, the 9th. Xhosa War broke out.

This was to be the last of a long series of wars of Black resistance to White expansionism, from 1779 to 1878, a period of 99 years.

The tragedy really marked the end of Xhosa resistance.

The subjugation of the Xhosa by the White Europeans was to last until 1994.

From 1878 until 1994, the Xhosa people lived under the colonial and neo-colonial oppression of White Europeans, a period of 116 years.