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NONGQAWUSE |
| The extraordinary events and consequences that were unleashed by the vision of the sixteen-year old Xhosa prophetess Nongqawuse that resulted in the death of thousands and thousands of Xhosa people in 1857 represent the violent and irreconcialable clash between tradition and modernity which in actuality was the outcome of the forceful entrance of European modernity into African history, i. e., the subjugation of African history by European history. The whole tragic episode and consequently the figure of the prophetess are best reconstructed in the form of a collage of texts drawn from the imagination of four major African intellectuals and writers: William W. Gqoba (1840-88), Solom T. Plaatje (1879-1932), H. I. E. Dhlomo (1903-56), A. C. Jordan (1906-68). Jordan, eminent Xhosa scholar and great Xhosa novelist (Ingqumbo yeminyanya [1940, The Wrath of the Ancestral Spirits]), sets the context for this reconstruction with this passage from Towards an African Literature: The Emergence of Literary form in Xhosa (originally appeared as a series of essays in the South African journal Africa South in the 1950s; subsequently published in a book form by the University of California Press in 1973): "Nongqawuse is the name of the girl generally held responsible for the 'National Suicide of the Xhosa People' in 1856-1857. The story of her meeting with the 'spirits of warriors long dead', of their enjoining her to tell chiefs and the people to destroy all their livestock and food stores, of the carrying out of this injunction, and the subsequent famine and deaths, all this is told in records of missionaries and colonial officials, who were working amongst the Xhosa when these things happened. And all those who are familiar with South African history know it either directly from these records or from ordinary history books. Yet very few people know that there is an account of this incident, written by an African who was living at the time, to be found in [Walter B.] Rubusana's Anthology Zemk'linkomo Magwala ndini [1906], and the author is non other than William W. Gqoba, the historian-poet . . . ." A. C. Jordan translates in his book the whole four-page of Gqoba's The Cause of the Cattle-Killing at the Nongqawuse Period, which relates the tragedy decades later the first modern Xhosa poet witnessed as a seventeen-year old. For our purposes, the following is excerpted: "It so happened that in the Thenjini region of Gcalekaland, in the ward of headman Mnzabele, in the year 1856, two girls went out to the lands to keep the birds away from the corn. One was named Nongqawuse, daughter of Mhlakaza, and the other the daughter of a siste of Mhlakaza's. Near a river known as the Kamanga two men approached them and said, 'Convey our greetings to your people, and tell them we are So-and-So and So-and-So' (giving their names). And the names by which they called themselves turned out to be the names of people who were known to have died long ago. They went on to say: 'You are to tell the people that the whole community is about to rise again from the dead. Then go on to say to them all the cattle living now must be slaughtered, for they are reared with defiled hands, as the people handle witchcraft. Say to them there must be no ploughing of lands, rather must the people dig deep pits (granaries), erect new huts, set up wide, strongly built casttlefolds, make milk-sacks, and weave doors from buka roots. The people must give up witchcraft on their own, not waiting until they are exposed by the witchdoctors. You are to tell them that these are the words of their chiefs, ---the words of Napakade (Forever), the son of Sifubasibanzi (the Broad-chested).['] On reaching home the girls reported this, but no one would listen to them. Everybody ridiculed them instead. . . . Nongqawuse had said that anyone who, on slaughtering his ox, decided to dispose of its carcass by barter, should nevertheless engage its soul, in order that on its coming back to life it should be his property. And she had said that all those who did not slaughter their cattle would be carried by a fierce hurricane and thrown into the sea to drown and die. The community was split in two. One section believed that the resurrection of the people would come some day, but not that of the cattle. Thereupon, father fell out with son, brother with brother, chief with subjects, relative with relative. Two names emerged to distinguish the two groups. One group was named amaTamba (the Submissive), that is, Nongqawuse's converts. The other was called amaGogotya (the Unyielding), that is, those who were stubborn and would not kill their cattle. So some slaughtered their cattle, and others did not. as the killing of the cattle went on, those who had slaughtered hurriedly for fear of being smelt out began to starve and had to live by stealing the livestock of others. Then everybody looked forward to the eigth day. It was the day on which . . . . Such then was the Nongqawuse catastrophe. The people died of hunger and disease in large numbers. Thus it was that whenever thereafter a person said an unbelievable thing, those who heard him, said: 'You are telling a Nongqawuse tasle'." William W. Gqoba relates this tragic narrative of Nongqawuse within the context of the historical drama that was tearing apart the Xhosa nation: the cataclysmic clash between Christianity and the African religious systems, between the Christian converts and the so-called heathens. In fact, one can plausibly argue that the collision between these two historical forces, at the dawning moment of modernity, is what triggered the Nongqawuse tragedy. H. I. E. Dhlomo, our greatest reader of African modernity in the twentieth-century, in a 'Historical Note' to his historical drama The Girl Who Killed to Save (Nongqawuse the Liberator), has written a compelling interpretation of this monumental episode in South African history as a conflict between that what has been and that what has yet to be (tradition and modernity): "During 1856 there befell what is perhaps the most extraordinary episode in all the history of the South African tribes. in that year there arose among AmaXhosa the most renowned of their seers, Umhlakaza, assisted by his daughter Nongqause, a prophesying medium, who, in all likelihood, exercised the powers of a ventriloquist. Umhlakaza preached a new gospel, which was none other than a resurrection from the dead. Nongqause declared that she had held converse with the spirits of old heroes of the tribe, who intimated that they had witnessed with sorrow the ruin of their race through the oppression of the conquerors from overseas; and as they would no longer be silent spectators of the wrongs and insults, it was their intention to come to the rescue and save their progeny from destruction. They would appear once more in the flesh amongst their people, but they would not do so unless the nation would exterminate all animals, both great and small, with the exception of horses and dogs. All grain was to be thrown away and the fields were to be left untilled. As soon as this was done vast herds would emerge from the ground, the country would smile again with grain, and there would be plenty for everyone. The advent of the resurrection would be preceded by a frightful whirlwind, which would sweep off all members of the tribe who refused to obey the order of the spirits. Throughout the district occupied by the AmaXhosa, and particularly amongst the Gcaleka tribe, cattle began to be slaughtered. . . . On the eighth day---27th February, 1857---heaven and earth, it was said, would come together amid darkness, thunder, lightning, rain and a mighty wind, by which all unbelievers together with the White men would be driven into the sea. The sun would rise blood-red and at noon suddenly descended not not to the west but to the east. At dawn of the great day a people, many of whom had not slept, rose joyfully, decked themselves with paint, beads and rings to welcome their long-lost friends. The sun appeared and made the circuit of the heavens watched by expectant hosts. He set in silent majesty in the west, leaving the usual darkness over the earth and the black darkness of a bitter disappointment in the hearts of thousands. Those who had destroyed their property sat at their villages with starvation staring them in the face, but still hoping for the fulfilment of the prophecy. Every morning the kraals and corn-pits were eagerly inspected, and hope sickened but not quenched. The moon was anxiously watched by night and the sun by day by hunger-stricken hosts. The bones they had cast away in the days of feasting were gathered and gnawed. Women and children wandered through the fields digging for roots. When many deaths had taken place a trek was made to the Colony, where large numbers were fed by Europeans, but by thousands this step was taken too late. Some had no strength even to forsake their villages. Thousands died by the roadside, some only a short distance from succour. It was estimated that 20,000 men, women, children perished, while 150,000 cattle met their death. Among the dead was Umhlakaza, but Nongqause lived for many years. For long the veld was strewn with bones bleaching in the sun.' This is an extraordinary passage by any measure. Without seeking to give detailed explanations of its uniqueness, several distinguishing features need to be mentioned. First, Dhlomo reveals himself to be a very brilliant literary stylist. Second, his theatrical imagination is revealed in its full amplitude----a historical episode is transformed through narration into a theatrical presentation-----the spirits of the dead are 'spectators'; Nongqause is a 'ventriloquist'; and so on. Third, here is displayed the historicity of Dhlomo's imagination---the passages bristles with historical allusions----the millenarian movement of Butelezi; the Garveyism of James M. Thaele; modernity and tradition; the conjunction between Christian symbology and the animistic philosophy; the event is related to the African cosmological systems and to the cosmic forces of the universe; with the reference to 'race' Dhlomo is alluding to New Negro modernity. Lastly, the passage is full of historical ironies----the African trek is towards the Cape, not away from it as is the case with the so-called 'Great Trek'; AmaXhosa seek help and restoration from their oppressors. What Dhlomo seems to be saying is that modernity is inescapable and unavoidable. This is the reason that he poses this historical drama as a clash between the Old and the New. Dhlomo's reading of this historical event as reflecting Nongqause's inability or unwillingness to make sense of the dawning age of modernity can be related to Mzilikazi's great Shakespearean soliliquy in Solomon T. Plaatje's novel Mhudi, the Ndebele Chief at the moment of defeat by the combined forces of the Barolong and the Boers declares that although he is aware of the historical necessity of the New Age he is unabled to disengage himself from the conventions and customs of the Old Age in order to enter the new era: "Mzilikazi quavered under the lash of these reminders. He re-called with a pang the patriotic speeches of Dambuza and the others, now killed, and the poignancy of the new situation in which Gubuza, who in the heyday of their rejoicings was accused of being a coward, now remained his sole pillar of strength. 'Where is that bombastic spirit now,' he asked himself. 'The wind, which at one time seemed to be under my sway and that of my invincibles, continues to blow as if nothing has happened; the leaves of the great modubu and mopani trees are waving in the breeze as if gladdened by the flight and melody of birds of every plume. The mountain mist like like a giant pall still connects the peaceful earth with a dull sky and the clouds roll heedlessly by in the same manner as they did during the height of my glory; everything retains its natural serenity, the fatal comet has not blighted their existence. Only one giant is uprooted and overthrown. Low lies the city of Inzwinyani. Mayebab'o! (Alas!) Shall not my greatness survive? Could not the storm have been averted? Yes, then why was it not avoided? Forsooth, the cataclysm was not unexpected.'" (p.171). For both Nongqause and Mzilikazi the New Age was a cataclysmic force of unparalleled dimensions. It was the tragic nature of their incomprehension that has fed the fertile literary imagination of our best writers from William W. Gqoba to H. I. E. Dhlomo. | |