Oral history: This is how a 19th century Xhosa preacher remembers
his people’s past. It is one of few instances of oral history being captured from
those who were there, or heard it from their fathers, who lived it.
Nongquase’s
fatal prophecy, and
The
notorious Hope’s War
One day in the 1880s, James Madala, “the ever zealous churchwarden
and preacher who has been our right hand for many years”, gave the Rev Callaway
his version of the history of the Amapondomisi people.
“I was born in the year when
Umhlakaza declared his message – the white man stayed, and the black people
died like locusts,” James told the head of the St Cuthbert’s Mission.
Madala was referring to perhaps the
strangest and most controversial incident in Xhosa history – one interpreted
several ways for differing ideological reasons today.
Madala’s version was the following, according to the words recorded by Rev Callaway::
“One of Chief Kreli’s counselors, named Umhlakaza, announced that he had
received a message from the other world. It had come to him through his
daughter Nongquase who professed to have seen the spirites of the old
heroes of the tribe. They had announced to her that they and all the dead
warriors of the race would appear once more in the flesh to rescue their
nation. Their coming would be preceded by a whirlwind which would sweep off all
the English. The sun would rise
blood-red, and at noon suddenly descend to the east. Out of the earth would rise vast herds of fat English cattle,
food, guns &c. Living men and women
would resume the bloom of youth, and the race would be gifted with immortality.
“The spirits demanded, as a
condition of their appearance, that all cattle must be slain, every grain of
maize and corn must be thrown away, and the land must remain untilled.
“If Kreli did not invent the
prophecy, he encouraged it in order to force on another war,” opined Callaway.
“For months the slaughter of cattle went on. Grain was destroyed until none was
left and the people began to suffer from famine. At last the supposed
resurrection day arrived. The cattle kraals had been enlarged to receive the
expected herds, the corn pits were cleared out… A dreadful period of famine
followed, in which some 30,000 perished.”
James lived through the period between this national tragedy and the
last war of the Xhosa people – a period in which “the war-cry was never long
unheard”.
Hope’s War: The account given in Blood on the Path is taken from the same source.
James Madala said: “In the days
when I was born our tribe was living between the Umtata and the Bashee rivers.
In those days Mditshwa was a great chief.
Many were the stories I heard of his brave doings. Sometimes some of us herd-boys, when we had
shut up the cattle safely in the kraal, used to hide ourselves and listen to
the men talking of the wars.
“Our enemies were many. On the one
side the Pondos, on the other the Tembus. Both these tribes had larger impis
(armies) than our own. The warriors
used to say that before engaging the enemy they would watch Mditshwa’s face,
and when he smiled they knew it would go well. When I was still quite a small boy our tribe was at last driven
out, and we were forced to retreat to these parts between the Inxu and the
Tsitsa rivers.
“For many years after this I
remember nothing but the sound of war.
It was soon after this time that the gourd was split right in two.” (The
tribe was divided). “The two halves
both hold milk now, but at first it seemed that the two sections of the tribe
would swallow one another up.
“Our chief, Mditshwa, never
disputed that Mhlonhlo was the paramount chief, but he said , ‘My people are mine and not his’.”
“…it was Mditshwa who consented to
the white (missionary) men coming… but it was only after a long time that we
knew that we had with us a great chief – a white man with a [true] black heart.
Mditshswa welcomed the white government and said he was glad, and that we
should no longer be eaten up by our enemies.
{But later} he used to say that the Government took away his people from
him. Even to us it did not seem good that men could run round the chief to go
to the magistrate.
“We think of these complaints today
and we remember Hope’s War”
[Rev Callaway described Hope’s War
thus: In 1881, Mhlonhlo, the chief of the other section of the tribe, agreed
to meet Mr Hope, the Magistrate of Qumbu, at Sulenkama. Mr Hope went to the appointed place with
only three English companions and two or three native policemen, and he and his
companions were cruelly murdered. The mPondomisi then rose in rebellion, but
were finally crushed. Mditshwa was taken prisoner to Cape Town, and Mhlonhlo,
after hiding successfully for twenty-four years, was captured last year, and
aftrer a long trial was acquitted of actual murder.]
James Madala told Callaway:“That
was a bad thing which Mhlonhlo’s men did to kill the hand of the Government. We
are sorry that Mditshswa joined in that war.”
There
are other versions of the Hope’s War.
Merriman’s contemporaneous comments on it appeared in despatches he
sent to his London newspaper when he was a war correspondent, and in a letter published by the Graaff
Reinet Advertiser, and re-published in Cape Town’s Argus.
Charles Brownlee in his reminiscences emotionally describes the
death of his friend and states it occurred through plotted treachery by Chief
Mhlonho, who lured the magistrate Hamilton Hope and his men to a meeting where
he had six warriors ready to stab them in the back.
Most published histories of South Africa mention ‘Hope’s War’ only
briefly – if at all - despite it being the last Colonial vs African Tribal war.
