SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY: The prophecy of Nongqawuse which destroyed the Xhosa tribes

1856 was a bad year for some of the Xhosa tribes.

It was about three years after the 8th Frontier War - one of the most severe. Their lands had been taken by the British, drought had withered their crops, and their cattle were dying of a mysterious disease - Lung Sickness. These tribes were desperate and hope came in the form of a prophecy from a young girl called Nongqawuse.

The grave of Nongqawuse

She received word from spirits of the ancestors who instructed her to pass on the following prediction:

The dead would arise;
all living cattle would have to be slaughtered, having been reared by contaminated hands;
cultivation would cease;
new grain would have to be dug;
new houses would have to be built;
new cattle enclosures would have to be erected;
new milk sacks would have to be made;
doors would have to be weaved with buka roots and lastly;
that people abandon witchcraft, incest and adultery.

By February 1857 more than 200 000 cattle had been slaughtered and all the summer crops burnt.

The were ready for the allotted day of 18 February 1857. The day came and nothing happened. A small minority of Xhosa, known as the amagogotya (stingy ones), refused to believe in the prophecy and did not participate in the preparations. Nongqawuse used this refusal to rationalise the failure of the prophecies.

The tribes were weakened and began to starve and within a few months more than a third of had died of starvation and disease.

The British Governor of the Cape started a labour 'recruitment' programme and transported thousands of Xhosa across the border into Cape Colony. At the same time the trekboer and the British settlers who were the ones actively fighting the Cape Frontier Wars supported the survivors who streamed into their small colonial towns, with food and work.

The estimated figure of those who died as result of the cattle-killing stands at 40,000 (out of about 90,000).

Nongqawuse herself survived, although several of her family members starved to death. She was arrested by the British authorities and imprisoned on Robben Island. Shortly afterwards she was released after which she assumed another name and took up residence a remote farm near the town of Alexandria until her death in 1898.

Sources:
http://www.artefacts.co.za/main/Buildings/style_det.php?styleid=672
http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/conquest-eastern-cape-1779-1878#
http://www.wildcoast.co.za/nongqawuse
http://www.siyabona.com/eastern-cape-xhosa-cattle-killing.html
http://www.historywiz.com/frontierwars.htm